My Dad's Best Friend Moved Into My Spare Room After His Divorce, and the Promise He Made My Father Lasted Four Days novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Shoebox

The shoebox lived on the top shelf of my closet, behind a sleeping bag and a hatbox of my mother's Christmas ornaments.

It was a Red Wing box, size nine, with a rubber band around it that had gone brittle and broke when I touched it.

I carried it downstairs at nine on Sunday morning and set it on the kitchen table between the coffee and the toast.

Ed stood at the counter with his back to me, pouring.

He turned around with two mugs.

He looked at the box.

He put the mugs down.

"That's a boot box," he said.

"It's not for boots."

"Lori."

"Sit."

He sat.

Walter put his chin on Ed's knee, the way he did when somebody was about to be sad.

I lifted the lid and took out four envelopes, each with his name on the front in my handwriting and no address.

I laid them in a row on the table.

"These are from New Year's Eve," I said. "The first one is the week of the funeral. I write one every December thirty-first. I don't mail them."

His hand came out and stopped an inch from the first envelope.

"Why not?"

"Because you were married."

He took his hand back.

"And then because I'd gotten into the habit."

I opened the first one myself, since he wasn't going to.

The paper was lined, torn off a legal pad.

I cleared my throat.

"Dear Ed. You wouldn't let me pay you for the porch. You said the lumber was left over. I called the lumberyard. They said you bought it Tuesday, forty-one boards, to the inch. I'm writing to say I know, and I'm not going to say it to your face, because you'd look at your boots. Happy New Year. Lori."

I put it down.

"I'm twenty-five in that one," I said. "I had no idea what I was doing."

Ed's eyes were on the page.

"I looked at my boots," he said.

"You always look at your boots."

"I'm looking at them now."

"I can see that."

I slid the second one across.

He opened it with a thumb, and it was shorter, and he read it aloud in the voice he used on lumber orders.

"Dear Ed. You came to Dad's Christmas and sat in the corner with a paper plate and told my cousin's husband about a joist for twenty minutes. I've never been so jealous of a joist. You looked up once, at me, across the whole living room, and I forgot the name of the street I live on. I'm going to stop writing these. Lori."

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