Then I hung up.
I do not yet know what that conversation was the beginning of, or whether it was the beginning of anything.
Kevin surprised me.
He came to my door in November.
I saw his car in the driveway from the kitchen window and stood there for a while before I opened the door.
He looked terrible.
He also looked sober, which sometimes looks the same.
He stood on the porch without speaking.
Then he said, “I knew, Dad. Not all of it. Not the ticket cancellation. But I knew they wanted to leave you there long enough to scare you into signing.”
He looked down at his shoes.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to go. I told myself that four times. Then I went anyway because I didn’t want to be the one who blew everything up. I’ve always been the one who blows things up.”
He looked at me.
“I blew it up anyway. Just from the other direction.”
I opened the door.
“Come in.”
We sat at the kitchen table for two hours.
He drank coffee.
I drank coffee.
We talked about Dorothy, which we had not done since the funeral. We talked about the company. We talked about the fourteen months when he had been sober and what that version of Kevin had been like.
He said that version of Kevin had wanted to call me more often and did not know how.
I told him that version of Kevin could call me anytime.
He said the new one could too.
“I know,” I said.
Kevin has been in a program for eight weeks now. He calls every Sunday at noon. Last Sunday, Eli was at my house, and I put the call on speaker, and the three of us talked for forty-five minutes about baseball and nothing serious at all.
When Kevin hung up, Eli said, “I like Uncle Kevin.”
“So do I, kiddo,” I said. “So do I.”
Gerald had one more thing to give me.
He gave it to me in the parking garage after the civil verdict, away from cameras and reporters.
It was an envelope.
Cream-colored.
Letter-sized.
Sealed with a wax stamp in the shape of a small star.
Dorothy’s stationery.
I knew it before I touched it.
Gerald said, “She gave this to me eleven months before she passed. She said, ‘Gerald, if the children do what I’m afraid they might, give this to Tom after it’s over, not before.’”
“She knew,” I said.
Gerald looked at me.
“She always knew, Tom.”
I held the envelope in the parking garage for a long time.
Then I put it in my coat pocket and drove home.
I made coffee.
I sat at the kitchen table where Dorothy and I had eaten breakfast for forty years, and then I opened it.
Thomas,
If Gerald is giving you this, then something happened and you are on the other side of it now. That means you made it through, which I knew you would, because you always do.
I want you to know that I saw this coming for a long time. Not the specifics. I did not know how or when. But I watched the three of them these last few years, and I saw what they were becoming, and I saw how much of it was my fault.
The way I let Daniel think he was always the smartest one in the room.
The way I let Lisa get away with things because she smiled so well.
The way I never pushed Kevin hard enough when the pushing might have helped.
I failed them in different ways. I have carried that. I do not want you to carry it with me.