My husband Danny died two years ago. A drunk driver ran a red light on his way home from work. He was thirty-six.
Our son Eli was six.
Danny’s mother, Donna, has never forgiven me. For what, I’m not entirely sure. For being the one he married, maybe. For being the one who got to keep his son. For working as a dental hygienist instead of something she considered respectable. She’s never said it out loud, but she’s made it clear in a hundred small ways.
Danny’s younger brother, Scott, has a son too. Tyler is nine. Tyler is the golden grandchild. Tyler gets the big Christmas presents, the trips to the lake, the framed photos on Donna’s mantel.
Eli gets a card with twenty dollars in it. Sometimes.
Last Saturday was Eli’s eighth birthday. Money’s been tight since Danny died, so I kept it small. Homemade chocolate cake, balloons, pizza, family only. I invited Donna and Danny’s dad, Frank, because Eli loves his grandpa. Frank is a quiet man, a retired machinist who barely says ten words at a family dinner. But he always gets down on the floor and plays Legos with Eli.
Scott and his wife brought Tyler.
When it was time for presents, Donna made a production of it.
“Oh, Tyler, honey, this one’s for you,” she said, and handed Tyler an enormous box. It was a brand-new video game console. Five hundred dollars, easily.
At my son’s birthday party. For his cousin.
“Tyler’s report card was all A’s,” Donna explained to the room. “He deserves a reward.”
Eli watched Tyler tear into the box. He didn’t say anything. He’s gotten very good at not saying anything around his grandmother.
Then Donna reached into her purse and pulled out something flat, wrapped in newspaper. Not even wrapping paper. The Sunday sports section.
“And this is for the birthday boy,” she said.
Eli unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a book. An old hardcover with a faded green cloth cover, the corners soft and frayed, the spine cracked. Treasure Island.
Eli held it up and tried to smile. “Thank you, Grandma.”
“It’s used,” Donna said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I found it in a box in the attic. I figured, since that’s what he’s used to. Hand-me-downs.”
Scott’s wife actually laughed.
I felt my face go hot. I opened my mouth to say something I would have regretted.
But before I could, Frank put down his plate.
He hadn’t said a word all afternoon. He got up from his chair, walked around the table, and put one big hand on Eli’s shoulder. He was looking at the book with the strangest expression on his face.
“Eli,” he said quietly. “Turn to page 112.”
Donna’s head snapped toward him.
“Frank, what are you…”
“Page 112, buddy,” Frank repeated, not looking at her.
Eli flipped through the yellowed pages. When he got to 112, the book fell open on its own, because something had been tucked there for a very long time.
A folded piece of lined paper. And underneath it, a stiff envelope with a bank’s logo in the corner.
Donna went completely white.
“Frank,” she said. “What did you do?”
Frank didn’t answer her. He knelt down next to Eli’s chair, which I’d never seen him do with his bad knees.
“That book was your daddy’s,” he said. “It was his favorite when he was your age. He read it so many times the cover fell off and I glued it back on.”
Eli looked down at the book like it had suddenly turned to gold.
“Your grandma went up in the attic last week looking for something old to give you,” Frank said. “She thought it was just junk. She didn’t recognize it. But I did.”
He unfolded the lined paper and handed it to me, because Eli’s hands were shaking.
It was a letter. In a child’s handwriting. Pencil, big loopy letters.
“Dear Future Me. I am 12. When I grow up I am going to have a kid and I am going to read him Treasure Island and we are going to be pirates. Do not forget. Love, Danny.”
I had to put my hand over my mouth.
Danny had written a letter to his future self, tucked it in his favorite book, and forgotten about it. It had been sitting in a box in his parents’ attic for twenty-five years.
“I found it when I saw her wrapping the book,” Frank said. “I sat in the garage and read it about fifty times.”
Then he nodded at the envelope.
“The other thing is from me.”
I opened it.
Inside was a statement for a college savings account. The beneficiary was Eli Daniel Brooks.
The balance was sixty-two thousand dollars.
“Frank,” Donna said. Her voice was barely a whisper now. “Where did that money come from?”
“I sold the boat,” Frank said.
“You told me you sold the boat to pay off the camper.”
“I lied to you, Donna.” He stood up slowly. “First time in forty-one years.”
The room was dead silent. Tyler had stopped playing with his console.
Frank turned and looked at his wife, and I saw something in his face I’d never seen before. Anger. Quiet, old, patient anger.
“Two years,” he said. “Two years I’ve watched you treat our son’s boy like he’s a stranger. Like he’s a charity case. Our Danny’s boy. I watched you give Tyler a brand-new bike last Christmas and hand Eli a card. I’ve watched you make his mother feel like dirt at every dinner.”
“Frank, I…”
“I kept quiet because I’m a coward, and because I figured you’d come around. You didn’t. So I did something about it.” He looked at the book in Eli’s lap. “And then you wrapped up our son’s favorite book in the sports section and called it a hand-me-down. At his son’s birthday.”
Donna started to cry. Not loud. Just tears running down her face, her hands clasped in her lap.
“I didn’t know it was his,” she whispered. “I didn’t recognize it. Oh my God. I didn’t recognize it.”
“I know,” Frank said. “That’s the problem, Donna. You stopped looking.”
Scott quietly gathered up his family and left a few minutes later. Donna went out to sit in the car.
Frank stayed.
He stayed until the sun went down. He sat on the couch with Eli tucked against his side and read the first three chapters of Treasure Island out loud, doing all the pirate voices. I hadn’t heard Eli laugh like that since before the accident.
Donna called me four days later. She asked if she could come over. Alone.
I almost said no.
She sat at my kitchen table and cried and apologized for two hours. She said that after Danny died, every time she looked at Eli she saw her son, and it hurt so much that it was easier to look away. And she’d been looking away for so long, it had turned into something ugly that she didn’t recognize in herself.
I don’t know if I’ve forgiven her yet. But I’m trying. She’s trying too. She takes Eli to the library every Thursday now. She lets him pick whatever he wants.
Frank and Eli finished Treasure Island in three weeks. Then they started over.
Danny’s letter is in a frame on Eli’s nightstand.
Last night, I peeked into his room and found him asleep with the book on his chest, open to page 112.
Danny didn’t get to read it to his son.
But in a way, I think he did.
