Page 138 of Not a Word

Diana set up her easel in the kitchen and tried to paint a landscape. I busied myself puttering around the house. I tidied my workbench in the garage. Not that much had been happening there. I was not much of a do-it-yourselfer. I didn’t tackle household projects on my own. When a pipe burst, I called a plumber. When the lights flickered, I brought in an electrician.

When I was done in there, I took a partly filled garbage bag and did a run through the house. Kitchen, bathrooms, the wastepaper baskets in all the bedrooms. My last stop was Gage’s room. He was outside doing something, probably wearing a path into the pavement with his skateboard.

As I was emptying Gage’s trash into the bag, something caught my eye.

It was a crumpled piece of paper, with one word—FROM—visible in one corner. I snatched it up, uncrumpled it, and saw that it was a sheet of personalized stationery from a notepad. Across the top it read:

FROM THE DESK OF BRENT CHARTWELL

It was identical to the sheet of paper found on the bedside table in my parents’ bedroom. McCabe had shown that note to me, asking whether the words written on it, where Dad took responsibility for killing Leah Kennard, were in my father’s handwriting.

I’d concluded they were.

There was some writing on this sheet of paper, too, in that same handwriting. If this was indeed something my father had scribbled, this was what he’d had to say:

It’s okay. I love you, Holden. Listen to Gage. Dad

I stared at it for a long time. Sat on the corner of Gage’s bed, looking at that slip of paper, wondering what it meant.

It’s okay. I love you, Holden. Listen to Gage. Dad

Where had this come from? Why was it in Gage’s trash? I stared at it for the longest time.

It’s okay. I love you, Holden. Listen to Gage. Dad

“You seen Gage?” I said, walking into the kitchen, where Diana was putting together some lunch.

“Last I looked, he was going up and down the street.”

I went out front, and there he was. Zipping along on his skateboard. He was a bit obsessive about it today, going back and forth over and over again, but with no obvious sense of enjoyment. It was just something to do.

I walked to the end of the driveway and raised a hand as he approached. He came to an abrupt stop, one foot on the pavement, one on the board.

“What?” he said.

“Let’s take a walk.”

He tossed the board onto the lawn and joined me at my side as we strolled.

“Where we going?” he asked.

“Just walking.”

I took the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and handed it to him, not saying a word.

Gage stopped, looked at it, handed it back to me.

Said nothing for at least a minute. I waited.

“I was supposed to give that to Holden,” he said finally. “And I never got to it and didn’t see the point later. He knew.”

I still said nothing, waiting for more. Gage bit his lower lip, looked away, struggling with what to say.

Finally, he said, “Uncle Holden held everything in, and it fucked him up.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But sometimes, telling everything, that can fuck you up too.”