AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I answer his questions, and nothing I say seems to faze him...until he asks for my husband’s name.
"Boudreau," he repeats, frowning. “No relation to Enson Boudreau, right?”
"That’s his uncle. Is it a problem?"
He winces. "He’s the DA and that’s a very litigious family, in general. It won't make anything easier, that's for sure."
My pen presses so hard into my notebook that the paper tears. “What won't it make easier? Money? Custody?"
He looks at me. Any enthusiasm he had for taking this case is gone. "It will make everything more difficult," he says, pushing his legal pad away. "If he’s at all like his uncle and father, it’ll take a lot of money to fight him.”
“What if I don’t have a lot of money?”
He sets his pen down. “Then you should carefully consider if this is really what you want to do, because it’s not likely to go as well as you think.”
My stomach twists. Because I didn’t expect it to go well in the first place.
ISthis really what I want?
I’ve asked myself the question a hundred times since lunch and I continue to ask it as I clean up dinner.
I know I don’t want to stay with Jeremy until the twins leave for college—enduring the insults, the threats, the cheating—but maybe what’s best for me is no longer relevant. The kids’ lives would be so much better in a thousand ways if I went back: a big house, amazing trips, and all the stupid things that matter to teenagers. Most importantly, I’d be able to stay home with them. I could help Henry with his reading and whatever else is coming down the pike.
I just don’t know.
My head jerks when the back door closes. The twins know they’re not allowed to go to the lake without asking, but sure enough when I look through the kitchen window, Henry’s traipsing across the backyard toward the dock, where Caleb’s got pieces of an engine spread out on a tarp.
By the time I reach them, Caleb is showing Henry how to sweep a rag inside some metal tubing. My breath holds when he attempts to hand it to Henry, who is apt to simply stare at him or walk away.
He instead takes the tubing and rag from Caleb’s hands and begins to do what Caleb asked. There’s another of those painful twists in my chest, the ones I feel so often where Henry is concerned.
“This is the anti-ventilation plate,” Caleb says, holding a rectangular piece aloft. His voice is gentle and patient—wildly different from the one I hear at work. “Ventilate meanslet air out. You don’t want to let the air or gas out near the propellers.”
“Because it will make them slow,” Henry says, his words so exact and precise that I have to swallow hard to fight the lump in my throat.
Caleb glances at me just as I blink my tears away and points to a toolbox that sits on the back stairs to his deck, holding ascrewdriver in the air. “Can you go up and get me the other one?” he asks Henry. “If you bring it back, I’ll let you put this together.”
Henry nods eagerly and runs across the yard. He looks so normal, like a kid excited to go to a party or sayhito his friends. Except Henry’s never been excited for those things. This is a first.
I force my gaze away from him and back to Caleb. “Thank you. Henry doesn’t…engage with a lot of people. This is different for him.”
Caleb glances up at me and back to the engine. It takes a moment for him to speak. “He’s extremely bright. A lot like a cousin of mine, actually.”
Is he trying to tell me something about Henry, or was it a meaningless aside? I bite down on the questions that follow.Is your cousin happy? Does he have friends and a family and a good life? Will Henry have those things too?
I’m not sure I want to know the answers.
Henry runs between us with the screwdriver, and I glance toward the house. I won’t ruin this for my son, even if I have to drag Sophie outside by the ankles. “I’ve got to get Sophie. We’ll just be up on the deck?”
Caleb nods at Henry. “I’ll send him back to you when we’re done. I could use the help.”
And there it is, on Henry’s face, another ghost of pleasure. It’s a small thing, but it’s a bridge—the first sign of him reaching out beyond me and Sophie. And it’s Caleb, of all people, who made it happen.
From the deck, I watch the two of them standing side by side. Henry reaches up and pulls one part loose from the other, then smiles at Caleb.
He would never do that with Jeremy—he wouldn’t approach, he wouldn’t try, he wouldn’t smile—because he’dknow it wasn’t safe. He’d know he was more likely to be ridiculed, to be told he’s failed, than any other outcome.
The answer I’ve been seeking floats silently to the surface, though I think it was there all along:
