Chapter 29: The Answer

Forty men stopped moving, and the television in the kitchen went on playing a cartoon to nobody.

Joost set down the gavel.

He pushed back the president's chair, turned it to face my son, and sat so that their eyes were level.

"Yes," he said.

My son took a bite of his grilled cheese and considered that.

"Mama said my dad was far away."

"I was."

"Why?"

"I did something wrong," Joost said. "And I took too long to fix it."

"Did you say sorry?"

"To your mother. I'm saying it to you now."

My son thought about it, chewing.

"Okay," he said. "Do you have a bike?"

"I do."

"Can I ride it?"

"When you're bigger."

"How big?"

Joost looked at me.

"Ask your mother," he said.

"I'm Brandsma," my son told him, in case there had been a mistake.

"You can stay Brandsma."

"Brandsma Verwey." He frowned. "With a small Verwey."

A sound came out of Truus that was half a sob and half a honk.

My son stood up on the second chair and reached out one grilled-cheese finger.

He touched Joost's left ear, the crooked one.

"You have my ear," he said, delighted.

Joost laughed, and then he put his hand over his eyes.

The whole room laughed with him, thick and wet, forty grown men wiping their faces on their sleeves.

"Are you going to live at our house?" my son asked.

"Femke?" Joost said.

"We'll see," I said.

"That's what Mama says when it's no," my son told him, kindly.

"Then I'll visit," said Joost, in a voice with nothing left in it.

The house on Ottawa Street was quiet by ten.

My son slept in the back room under the quilt Joost's mother had made, with a pirate in each hand.

Greet lay on the living room couch with the television on low and the shotgun on the floor beside her.

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