When the Road Went Silent novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Page Two

I read my father's second page alone, on the shop step, with the lake going gold in front of me.

His handwriting was big and slanted and pressed hard into the paper.

"Maxine. If you're reading this, you are thirty, and you have already been angry at somebody for a long time. Good. Be angrier than I was."

I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist.

"I asked Ward Hennessy to keep his head down and watch. He hated it. He asked me three times to let him do it the other way. I said no. If you're angry at him, put it on me."

"Don't hand the chair to the man who asks for it. Hand it to the one who stands behind you and never asks."

"I knew my heart was going. I didn't tell you because you'd have stopped sleeping. I'm sorry for that. I'm proud of every year of you."

I folded the page over my knee and sat there.

The boards creaked behind me.

Ward stopped three steps away, with his bandaged arm tucked against his ribs.

"I can go," he said.

"Sit."

He sat.

I held the page out, and he read it, and when he reached the middle he went very still.

"He never told me he knew about his heart," he said.

"He told me."

"He asked me to watch Cade, and I said yes." His voice was low. "I kept saying yes."

I took the page back.

"I need to say it to your face," I said. "I've been saying it in my head for four years."

"Say it."

"For four years I thought the man who loved my father stood by and let me rot." My throat was tight. "I thought you looked at me across rooms and let me smile at that liar and fold his shirts. I thought you were a coward."

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