Chapter 7
Sebastian lowered himself into the nearest chair.
He looked genuinely stunned.
Ruth sat across from him.
“She was afraid he would forget.”
Sebastian’s eyes lifted.
“You told me she wanted him to forget.”
“No.”
Ruth’s voice was gentle.
“I told you she wanted distance.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the box?”
“Because for years it belonged to Matteo’s childhood, not to you.”
Sebastian absorbed that.
Then nodded.
He did not argue.
Again, I saw the man he might once have been and the one sitting in front of us now.
Matteo watched him closely.
“I brought something.”
He reached into his backpack.
Sebastian’s gaze followed.
Matteo took out a photograph.
Old.
Slightly bent at one corner.
He handed it across.
Sebastian looked down.
Whatever he saw stole every word from him.
Later, he showed it to me.
It had been taken in a hospital room.
A twenty-four-year-old Sebastian sat in a chair wearing a wrinkled T-shirt.
He looked exhausted.
Much younger.
Matteo lay against his chest, almost entirely hidden inside a white blanket.
Sebastian’s head was tilted down.
His eyes were closed.
And one of Matteo’s tiny hands was curled around his finger.
On Sebastian’s wrist was a fresh hospital bracelet.
The same bracelet he had preserved for seventeen years.
On the back, Celia had written one sentence.
He only settles when Sebastian holds him.
Sebastian read it twice.
Then he rubbed one thumb lightly across the handwriting.
“I never saw this.”
“I know,” Matteo said.
Sebastian looked at him.
“Why did you bring it?”
Matteo shrugged, suddenly seventeen again.
“I thought maybe you should have one.”
Sebastian didn’t move.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Matteo…”
“It’s a picture.”
“It’s yours.”
“So make a copy and give it back later.”
Sebastian looked down.
“Right.”
Matteo smiled faintly.
“You really are bad at this.”
“Yes.”
That time Sebastian smiled too.
“Yes, I am.”
By late afternoon, something had changed.
Not repaired.
Not resolved.
Changed.
Matteo stayed.
He watched Claire feed Elliot.
He asked Dr. Park a dozen questions about premature babies.
He argued with Sebastian about whether The Wind in the Willows was actually interesting.
He sided with me on the Toad issue.
Sebastian called this betrayal.
For the first time, their resemblance became impossible to ignore because they expressed irritation exactly the same way.
Claire noticed too.
She leaned toward me.
“That is unsettling.”
“Very.”
“They both do the eyebrow thing.”
“I know.”
Ruth overheard.
“Matteo learned it from him.”
Sebastian looked over.
“I wasn’t around.”
“You were for seven years.”
That stopped him.
Ruth smiled gently.
“Seven years matters too.”
Sebastian looked at Matteo.
The boy was standing beside Elliot, listening while Claire explained how she had finally chosen his name.
Sebastian seemed to absorb Ruth’s words slowly.
Seven years mattered.
The past had not been only absence.
There had been mornings.
Books.
Bad singing.
Olives mistaken for grapes.
Hospital rooms.
Soccer balls.
Bedtime stories.
Maybe memory did not divide itself neatly into before and after.
Maybe love could survive inside fragments.
At six, Matteo prepared to leave.
Sebastian stood with him near the elevator.
The others gave them space.
Matteo adjusted his backpack.
Sebastian looked like he wanted to say ten things and trusted none of them.
Finally, he reached into his jacket.
“I have something.”
He pulled out the envelope marked seventeen.
Matteo stared at it.
“What’s that?”
“Your birthday card.”
“My birthday was months ago.”
“I know.”
“That’s very late.”
“I’ve been told I have timing issues.”
Matteo took the envelope.
He didn’t open it.
Not there.
“Thanks.”
Sebastian nodded.
Matteo stepped toward the elevator.
Then stopped.
“You still have the others?”
Sebastian froze.
“What others?”
“The box.”
Of course Ruth had told him.
Sebastian looked embarrassed.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Seventeen.”
Matteo stared.
“That seems excessive.”
“It may be.”
“What’s in them?”
“Things I wanted to say.”
Matteo considered that.
Then the elevator doors opened.
He stepped inside.
Before the doors closed, he said, “Don’t throw them away.”
Sebastian’s expression changed.
“I won’t.”
“And don’t give them to me all at once.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
The doors began closing.
Matteo reached out and stopped them.
“One more thing.”
Sebastian waited.
“Could we get coffee sometime?”
Everything in Sebastian went still.
Matteo added quickly, “Not here. Somewhere normal.”
“Yes.”
Too fast.
Matteo smiled.
“Okay.”
“When?”
“I’ll text Ruth.”
Sebastian nodded.
The doors closed.
He remained standing there.
For almost thirty seconds.
Then he turned toward me.
“He asked me to get coffee.”
“I heard.”
“Somewhere normal.”
“I also heard that.”
“What qualifies as normal?”
I laughed.
“Sebastian.”
“I’m asking seriously.”
“Coffee is coffee.”
“There are environments.”
“You own restaurants.”
“That complicates it.”
“Go somewhere you don’t own.”
He considered this as though I had proposed international diplomacy.
“Fine.”
Then he looked toward the closed elevator doors.
And smiled.
Not the small restrained smile we had become accustomed to.
A full one.
For once, he looked less like the man from the news and more like the twenty-four-year-old in the photograph.
The next morning, I expected him early.
He didn’t come.
Eight passed.
Then nine.
At nine-thirty, Claire asked where he was.
“No idea.”
At ten, I received a text.
Running late. Tell Elliot I have not abandoned him.
I showed Claire.
She laughed.
“He texts like someone’s grandfather.”
“He probably owns a flip phone.”
At ten-fifteen, he finally arrived.
He looked exhausted.
But different.
Lighter.
“What happened?” I asked.
He held up his phone.
“Matteo texted me.”
“You gave him your number?”
“Ruth did.”
“And?”
“He sent a photograph.”
“Of what?”
Sebastian showed me.
The picture was simple.
A kitchen table.
An open birthday card.
Beside it sat an old cassette tape.
On the tape, handwritten in blue ink, were the words:
SEB + MATTEO — HOSPITAL, 2009
Below the photograph, Matteo had written one message.
Found this in the box. I haven’t listened yet. Maybe we should do it together.
I smiled.
“That sounds promising.”
Sebastian nodded.
Then his expression became uncertain.
“There’s something else.”
He opened another message.
This one had arrived from Ruth minutes later.
It was longer.
Sebastian handed me the phone.
Before you listen to that tape, there is something I should have told both of you yesterday. Celia recorded more than memories. Near the end of the tape, she explained why she made the decision to leave Pine Valley. It was not only because of your father, Sebastian, or because of the life you were living. There was another reason. Matteo deserves to hear it with you.
I looked up.
Sebastian stood beside Elliot’s incubator, staring at the sleeping baby.
“What reason?” I asked.
“She didn’t say.”
“Did you call her?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She told me not over the phone.”
That was unusual for Ruth.
“She wants the three of you together?”
Sebastian nodded.
“Tonight.”
He looked down at the photograph on his phone.
For seventeen years, Sebastian had believed he understood the choice that separated him from Matteo.
His father had wanted distance.
Celia had wanted safety.
Sebastian’s life had been too complicated.
Those reasons had hurt, but they made sense.
Now one sentence had opened the past again.
There had been another reason.
One Celia had recorded in her own voice.
One Ruth had kept hidden until Sebastian and Matteo were finally sitting on the same side of the story.
I looked at him.
“Are you going?”
Sebastian’s fingers brushed the old hospital bracelet beneath his cuff.
“Yes.”
“Are you ready?”
He watched Elliot sleeping peacefully beneath the soft NICU lights.
Then he gave the answer I had heard from him more often lately.
“No.”
A small smile appeared.
“But I’m going anyway.”
That evening, Sebastian would sit beside Matteo for the second time in seventeen years.
Between them would be an old cassette player, a photograph of two brothers in a hospital room, and the voice of a woman who had loved them both enough to make a difficult choice.
And before the tape ended, they would learn that the story they had each carried for years was incomplete.
Not false.
Not meaningless.
Just incomplete.
For now, Sebastian pulled a chair beside Elliot.
He opened The Wind in the Willows.
And before beginning the next chapter, he tapped the cover three times.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
A habit Matteo remembered.
A habit Sebastian had never realized he kept.
Then he began to read.
May you like
Tonight would bring answers.
But for the first time, Sebastian was no longer searching for them alone.
