Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

  “Hey,” she says, “happy birthday.”

  “Oh.” He glances up at the night sky, at the punched-out stars in the black blanket. “It’s after midnight?”

  She nods, and he can tell, even though they haven’t spoken about it, that Shay understands that this birthday is different, and more complicated. She’s downstairs two minutes later, wearing sweats, and Edward leads the way to the garage. He feels ridiculous and exhausted, but also giddy, as Shay whispers questions from behind him.

  “What made you look in the garage?

  “Why were you up at this hour?

  “If you were going for walks, why didn’t you get me? I totally would have come….”

  Inside the garage, he points the flashlight at the chair, then the bookcase, the stacks of folders, and the locked duffel bags. He spots a small matching green footstool tucked under the armchair, which he pulls out for himself, while Shay sits down on the chair.

  He points at the top folder, and Shay puts it on her lap. She looks down and then up again at Edward.

  “What?” he says. “Go ahead, open it.”

  “No.” She says the word slowly, as if the syllable is a surprise to her.

  “No?”

  “I’m not going to open it unless you promise me something.” She pulls herself up straight. “You have to promise to stop being weird. You have to be normal with me from now on. You can’t go back to being all icy and far away tomorrow morning.” She pauses, then says more quietly, “I can’t take it anymore.”

  He looks into her eyes, startled. He realizes that they seem unfamiliar and that he hasn’t looked at her eyes for a long time. He’s been looking at the ground, looking away, scuffling inside himself. Edward understands, in that moment, that it’s been him all along, and not her. When Shay had said things were normal between them, she meant it. He’d convinced himself something between them was broken, when in truth the broken thing was him. Edward’s cheeks grow hot. He, alone, had almost destroyed the most important part of his life.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I promise.”

  “Good.” She nods. “I’ve missed you, you weirdo.” Shay opens the folder, and he watches her scan the flight list. “Is this what I think it is?”

  He presses his hands to his hot cheeks.

  She whispers, “You’re not here. What was your seat number?”

  “31A.”

  When she’s done reading, she lifts the top page aside and reveals a photograph of a blond woman. The woman is leaning forward slightly, smiling at the camera as if she’s trying to please whoever’s behind it. It’s a different photograph than the one Edward saw in the school parking lot, but he still recognizes her. He says, “That’s Gary’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh,” Shay murmurs. “Poor Linda.”

  Next there’s a photo of an unsmiling Benjamin Stillman in uniform, but Edward stays quiet. He’s never mentioned the soldier to Shay and has no idea how to explain who Benjamin is. How can he say, I only met him for a few minutes, but I think about him at least once a day and want to get strong because of him, without sounding stupid, or crazy?

  The following photos are of his family. His mother. His father. Jordan wearing the parka that Edward’s wearing right now. Then there’s a photo of the large woman who had bells on her skirt. She looks like she’s dancing; her arms are in the air. The photographs are so immediate—especially of his family—that Edward feels slightly seasick. It’s a relief when strangers appear. Many of the people look a little familiar but he can’t place them. Maybe he walked by their row on the plane. Maybe they stood in line together for the bathroom. His eyes fall on the rich-looking guy with the slicked hair, whom he does recognize. The man is smiling widely, but he looks a little angry, or mean, like he’s about to tell the photographer what’s wrong with him or her.

  Shay turns the photo of the rich guy over, and that’s how they discover that there are notes on the back of each picture. His name: Mark Lassio. His age, presumably at the time of the crash. A list of the names of living relatives, which in his case is only one, a brother named Jax Lassio, with an address in Florida.

  There are more than a hundred photographs in the folder, including two official-looking headshots of the pilots: one smiling under a salt-and-pepper mustache; the other, younger pilot somber but handsome. Edward feels their faces take up space inside him, as if the plane is being peopled within his skin. His arms are the wings. His torso, the body of the plane. The men and women file in, one by one.

  When they’ve looked at every photo, Shay closes the folder. They sit in the dimness without talking, and then Shay says, “I bet John started putting this together after you came back from D.C.”

  “What?” Edward’s hand rests on the folder. There’s so much within it, and for the moment he’s within it, and so what Shay’s saying doesn’t make sense.

  “That’s when he and Lacey stopped sleeping together, so that timing makes sense.”

  Edward looks at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Haven’t you noticed that John’s been sleeping on the bed in the nursery?”

  Edward pictures the nursery, with its stacked boxes and single bed. “I don’t…I never go up to the second floor. How do you know where he’s sleeping?”

  Shay swoops her hair up and twists it into a bun with mystifying speed and accuracy. Edward notices, not for the first time, that she has breasts now, the shape of which are visible through her sweatshirt. He blushes, and looks down.

  “Lacey told my mom. First she said it was because of an argument, but then she said it was actually because John snores. But that can’t be the real problem, because my mom says with the sleeping pills Lacey takes, there’s no chance she could hear him.”

  Edward scans the shadowy room. He’d thought this was a place where his uncle read novels and examined circuit boards, but there’s a darker exploration taking place. The shadows stretch toward him, swollen with potential secrets. “Lacey takes sleeping pills?”

  “The doctor gave them to her after the crash. Big horse pills. My mom worries that they’re too strong.” Shay notices the look on his face and gives him a comforting smile. “Don’t worry. I know you don’t notice things. I’ll be better from now on about pointing them out to you.”

  A week earlier, a student had brought cupcakes to French class to celebrate their teacher’s imminent maternity leave, and Edward had been confused because he somehow hadn’t noticed the teacher’s gigantic belly or registered any talk of her upcoming departure. With a cupcake in his hand, as the news sank in, he wondered how he’d been able to miss something so obvious.

  “Lacey does always go to bed early,” he says, trying to catch up.

  Shay nods. “She takes a pill right after dinner.”

  Edward presses his palm against the folder, which contains the names and faces and numbers his uncle has gathered. He thinks of all the faces at school that dislike him. He wonders how much else he’s missing and feels sympathetic to his uncle’s instinct to do research and take notes.

  “If it makes you feel better,” Shay says, “you notice things I don’t. What do you think brought you out here tonight? I think you were drawn here somehow. You sensed that there was something meaningful going on.”

  Edward shakes his head, dismissing that idea, even though at the same time he’s pleased that she can still imagine something special within him.

  “Lacey must be upset that John’s doing this.” Shay pokes the duffel bag closest to her. “What do you think’s in these? It must have to do with the flight.”

  That hadn’t occurred to Edward. He looks at the enormous bags with suspicion.

  “We should open them. There are more folders too. Let’s wait till tomorrow, though. You’re looking a little crazy around the eyes. No need to rush.”

  * * *

  —


  Edward tries to appear celebratory the next night, when he finds that Lacey has tied a balloon to the back of his chair at the kitchen table. “Hey, big guy,” his uncle says. “Fifteen, huh? You kids are really growing up.”

  Edward works his face into a smile. He wonders if his aunt or uncle is going to mention that this was Jordan’s age. Probably they won’t, and then he’ll be left wondering if they don’t remember or if they simply don’t know what to say about it.

  Shay gave him a pep talk before dinner: “I know you hate your birthday, but try to suck it up for John and Lacey.”

  Edward had nodded. Despite the unease this particular birthday delivers, he is sustained by a sodden gratitude, because what’s between him and Shay has been revived. He’s thankful that the folder in the garage made him reach out to Shay and therefore stopped him from blowing up his own life. Earlier today, Shay had looked at him and said, with apparent relief, “You’re being normal again.”

  Edward twirls spaghetti around his fork and tries to casually observe his aunt and uncle. Next to him, Shay appears to be doing the same thing. Edward checked the single bed in the nursery that morning, and it was clear John had slept there. His pajamas were folded over a chair, and the bedsheets were mussed. However, Lacey doesn’t appear to dislike her husband. She passes John the bowl of spaghetti and smiles when he makes a dumb joke about fifteen being the processing speed of his first computer.

  It occurs to Edward that he hasn’t seen Lacey throw a lightning bolt at her husband in a long time, nor has she clung to John like a needy child. She’s become steadier, but also more distant. Shay’s theory of marital unrest blames John for having a creepy hobby—collecting information on the crash—but Edward wonders if it’s actually Lacey who has changed and therefore thrown the balance off between them.

  “How did you guys meet?” Shay says.

  “Us?” Lacey looks surprised. “Oh gosh. We met in an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. We had a friend in common, and he introduced us. Then we had a big group dinner and sat next to each other.”

  “It was snowing,” John says.

  “It was snowing. We got married so quickly after that.” Lacey smiles. “Your mother told me I was crazy, but we were both ready to be married.”

  Shay narrows her eyes at Edward, and he can hear her thoughts: It was snowing. Lacey’s smiling. I think they still like each other. But this isn’t convincing enough for Edward. He remembers how his parents would sometimes start fighting in the middle of what seemed like a normal conversation. The vein on the side of his dad’s forehead would pulse, and his mom’s voice climbed a few octaves higher. Edward and his brother would look at each other in surprise, as if to ask, Did you see that coming? If he couldn’t understand the patterns of his own parents’ marriage, what hope does he have of doing so with his aunt and uncle? Besides, he’s Jordan’s age now, and his brother wouldn’t keep quiet.

  He says to John, “Why are you sleeping in the nursery?”

  The question makes everyone freeze. Lacey has her napkin pressed to her mouth; Shay and John are mid-bite. Edward notes the pause with a flicker of satisfaction.

  John’s cheeks darken. “I sleep there when my snoring bothers Lacey.”

  Lacey’s napkin is gripped in her fist. “Why do you ask?” Her voice lifts at the end of the question, as if trying to force a lighter tone.

  Edward says, “I guess I wondered if everything was okay.”

  This comment removes the air from the room again, and Edward knows, in the silence, that everything is not okay. Lacey and John exchange a look.

  Shay clears her throat and says, “There are nose bands I read about that apparently stop snoring. I think you can get them in the pharmacy.”

  John says, “Thank you, Shay. I’ll look into that.”

  “Where people sleep doesn’t matter.” Lacey points a look at Edward, which makes him half-remember saying something similar in the first few months of his stay, when she was unhappy about him sleeping at Shay’s house.

  “Now cake,” John says, as if it’s a command.

  They sing “Happy Birthday” while his uncle carries the multilayer cake over and gently places it in front of Edward.

  “Make a wish,” John says.

  Wishes are dangerous, pointless, and part of why Edward hates his birthday. He wishes he could ask his uncle if what he’s gathering in the garage is helping him, but Edward feels like he needs to find that answer for himself. He thinks, Are you doing this to protect me? Is it working?

  When Shay compliments the cake, Lacey says, “It was my grandmother’s recipe, which Edward’s loved since he was tiny.”

  “Yes,” Edward says, but the truth is that she has him confused with Jordan. It was Jordan’s favorite cake, and their mom had made it for Jordan on his birthdays. Edward’s favorite dessert—what he’d had for his birthdays while his parents were alive—was an ice cream sundae. But Lacey had been so pleased that she remembered his special dessert that he could never tell her the truth. He forks bites of his brother’s favorite cake into his mouth. He ate it on his thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays too. He will, he assumes, eat it on his sixteenth.

  John yawns and stands up.

  “What are you doing?” Lacey says, with disapproval in her voice.

  John looks around him, surprised. “I’m sorry,” he says, and sits back down. “That was rude. I didn’t mean to rush you.”

  “You’re tired,” Edward says.

  His uncle frowns, and something about his expression makes Edward understand that insomnia and nighttime disruption don’t belong only to him. In the dark, flat middle of the night, Edward had assumed that he was the only one awake, the only one who wasn’t allowed rest. But now teenagers are crossing lawns and John is choosing between beds, and Edward is another year older, another year distant from his family.

  * * *

  —

  Edward and Shay return to the garage at midnight, when all the grown-ups have been in bed for over an hour, so they deem it to be safe.

  Shay taps one of the duffel bags with her sneaker. “I estimate each one weighs about ten pounds. Maybe fifteen? They’re not as heavy as they look. And whatever’s in them is packed with some kind of paper. They crinkle.”

  “It might just be his summer clothes, or stuff for Goodwill.”

  “Then they wouldn’t bother to lock the bags. Nobody does that. Something important must be in them.”

  They take their seats: Edward on the footstool, Shay on the chair. Their plan is to finish going through the folders tonight—Shay wants to take notes on the contents—and turn their attention to opening the bags tomorrow. One folder contains pages of information on the Airbus A321 aircraft. There are diagrams of the plane, measurements of the wingspan, the engines, and the fuel capacity. The history of that kind of plane, and its frequency of use by different airlines. There are photographs of the underbelly of an Airbus A321, photographs of it from above, and one of it in the air. At the bottom of the folder are photographs of the crash scene. Edward can’t make his eyes focus on them. He hands them to Shay, and she puts them back in the folder.

  The other folder contains printouts of social-media mentions of either Edward or the flight. The top half is from a Facebook account called Miracle Boy. The avatar is the only photograph taken of Edward in the hospital. He has a bandage around his head and is looking to the side. Edward can barely recognize himself in the image. Most of the posts are URL links for news articles about the flight, but there are also posts with writing, which were cross-posted to the Twitter account with the same name. I am scared. I’m lonely. I miss my mom. I don’t know why I’m here. Maybe God did save me, but I’m just a kid.

  “Who would write this?” Edward whispers. “How could they think it was okay to do?”

  “I saw these in the beginning,” Shay s
ays. “Online. I didn’t know you yet, obviously, and I wondered if you were writing them in the hospital.”

  “I could hardly swallow,” he says, “much less set up a Twitter account.” But part of him thinks, Did I? His brain is undependable, with no fact solid enough to bear his weight. He imagines himself lying in the hospital bed, his leg in a cast, typing his feelings into an iPad.

  Shay holds the flashlight between cupped hands, as if it were the contents of a prayer. She shakes her head and whispers, “We’ve gone through everything. We should go.”

  Before they leave the garage, they reread the flight list—they are both trying to memorize the names—and check for new photographs in the first folder. John has added one since yesterday. It’s a photo of a red-haired woman wearing a white coat, with a stethoscope around her neck. She looks at the camera with an expression that suggests pausing for the photo was an inconvenience. Her name is written on the back: Dr. Nancy Louis. She’s survived by her parents, who have a Connecticut address.

  Edward recognizes her. The memory, which is tied to so much else, makes his throat tighten.

  “You knew her?” Shay says.

  “No,” he says, but that no hurts, and so does the last glance he gives the doctor before putting back the folder, and heading out the door, and across the frozen lawn.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning after math class, Margaret appears at his side and says, “It’s been bothering me, so I had to check. You didn’t get in trouble at all for shoving me, did you?”

  Edward looks down at her. He’s grown three inches in the last six months and is constantly surprised to see the tops of his classmates’ heads when he walks down the halls. “No,” he says. “I’m really sorry. It was a mistake. I kind of freaked out; that’s why I’m not in gym class anymore.”

  Then he sighs, because the football captain is approaching. He spots Edward and shows all his teeth in what Edward assumes is intended to be a smile, then puts his hand up for a mandatory high five. Edward raises his hand and slaps the kid’s palm. When he turns back to Margaret, she’s looking at him with disgust. “He’s not my friend,” Edward says.