A Cup Full of Midnight (36 page)

The note was brief. Only five lines.

Dear Uncle Jared,

I’m going to do the right thing.

Love,

Josh

P.S. I wish you were my father.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

S
ometimes in the evenings, I sit on the front porch with Luca in my lap and a beer in my hand and wait for the phone to ring, hoping it will be my brother.

It never is.

Two weeks after New Year’s, Randall sent a check. It was addressed to me, but it was meant for Wendy and the girls. The postmark was from Omaha. In February, Montreal. In March and April, Nome, Alaska.

There’s never a return address, and I don’t try to find one. That’s the way he wants it.

I carry Josh’s letter in my wallet, between Paulie’s picture and one of Randall’s family, all four of them, taken a few weeks before Josh opened his veins. They look happy.

Sometimes, I think of what might happen if a semi should roll over on my pickup, or a bullet were to shatter my window and drive into my brain. What it would do to Randall to open my wallet and read those words. I think about burning the letter, or shredding it, or dropping it into a landfill. Once, I held it to a candle, watched the edges brown and curl before I yanked it away from the flame. I know the words by heart, but I can’t bring myself to destroy the page. It’s as if some part of Josh lives in the ink and in the fibers of the paper. As if to destroy the letter would be to destroy all that’s left of him.

Jay rarely talks about that night. He bakes cherry cobbler. Plants miniature roses in his garden. Goes to dance clubs with Eric the maybe-
mensch
. On weekends, he sometimes sings my son to sleep. The scar on his throat is fading, but his eyes still carry the scars on his soul.

This is what we do, he says. He hands me another beer and sinks down on the porch step, a glass of lemonade in his hand. This is all we
can
do. We bend. We break. We carry on.