Chapter 3
“Bring her in.”
A minute later, Elena Alvarez entered.
She was smaller than I expected.
Late sixties, perhaps, with silver threaded through her dark hair and a navy cardigan buttoned carefully over a white blouse.
She carried an old leather handbag in both hands.
Rebecca walked beside her.
Sammy followed behind them, clutching a red toy truck.
I glanced at him.
“I thought this was an adult conversation.”
“He promised to color quietly in the corner,” Rebecca said.
Sammy nodded solemnly.
“I brought blue too.”
I looked at Rebecca.
She shrugged.
“Negotiations were difficult.”
Something in me softened.
“Fine.”
Sammy settled near the window with paper and crayons.
Elena remained standing.
I had negotiated acquisitions with people less nervous than this woman seemed to be.
“Mrs. Alvarez.”
“Elena is fine.”
“Then Ethan.”
She smiled.
“I remember when Daniel used to call you E.”
The room disappeared for half a second.
E.
No one had called me that since I was in my twenties.
I looked down at my hands.
“He hated long names.”
“He said Ethan was already short enough,” Elena replied. “He just liked teasing you.”
That sounded exactly like him.
“Please sit.”
Elena sat across from me.
Rebecca took the chair beside her.
For several seconds, I searched for the right question.
Finally I asked, “When did you last see my brother?”
Elena's expression changed.
“Seventeen years ago.”
Two years after our father's funeral.
I did the math immediately.
“Where?”
“Denver.”
I looked up.
“You went to see him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elena glanced at Rebecca.
Then she opened her handbag.
Slowly, she removed a large envelope.
She did not give it to me.
Not yet.
“Daniel left Chicago not long after your father died,” she said. “He called a few times. At first regularly. Then less often.”
“Did he say why?”
“He wanted distance.”
“From me?”
“From everything.”
I nodded.
That sounded like Daniel too.
“When he settled in Denver, he started working for a company that renovated older apartment buildings. Eventually he became a project manager.”
I tried to imagine my brother in Colorado.
For years, whenever I allowed myself to picture him at all, he remained frozen at thirty-three, wearing a charcoal coat outside our father's church.
I had never permitted him to grow older.
“Was he married?”
“No.”
“Children?”
Elena shook her head.
I wasn't sure why I felt relief.
Perhaps because the idea of nieces or nephews growing up somewhere without knowing me would have made the lost years harder to bear.
“Why did you visit him?”
“He asked me to.”
She turned the envelope over in her hands.
“He had something he wanted me to keep.”
My attention moved to it.
“What?”
Elena looked directly at me.
“A letter.”
The air shifted.
“For me?”
“Yes.”
My first reaction was almost anger.
“Seventeen years.”
Rebecca lowered her eyes.
Elena did not.
“You've had a letter from my brother for seventeen years?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you send it?”
“Because he asked me not to.”
I stared at her.
“That makes no sense.”
“It didn't make much sense to me either.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because what he asked was more complicated than that.”
Elena rested the envelope on her lap.
“He said I should give it to you only if you came looking for him.”
The words settled slowly.
“If I came looking.”
“Yes.”
My jaw tightened.
“So this was some kind of test?”
“No.”
“Sounds like one.”
“I asked him the same thing.”
Elena's voice remained gentle.
“He said it wasn't about punishing you. He said he didn't want his letter to arrive during a time when you would read it out of obligation, anger, or curiosity.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted you to read it when you actually wanted to know him again.”
I had no response.
Across the room, Sammy pushed a blue crayon carefully across a page.
The faint scratch of wax on paper filled the silence.
I looked at the envelope.
“Do you know what's inside?”
“No.”
“You never read it?”
“No.”
“Did Rebecca?”
“No,” Rebecca said.
I almost asked why I should believe them.
Then I stopped.
Distrust had become such an automatic habit that sometimes I mistook it for intelligence.
Elena extended the envelope toward me.
I didn't take it.
Not immediately.
“Why now?”
She smiled sadly.
“Because you asked to see me.”
“That's not the same as looking for Daniel.”
“No.”
She glanced at Sammy.
“But my grandson came home last week asking questions about a man named Daniel Caldwell.”
Sammy looked up.
“I asked good questions.”
“Yes, you did,” Elena said.
Then she turned back to me.
“I started wondering whether sometimes people begin looking before they realize that's what they're doing.”
I finally took the envelope.
It was heavier than a single letter should have been.
My name was written across the front.
ETHAN.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
Daniel's.
I ran my thumb over the faded ink.
For years I had signed contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars without hesitation.
Yet I could not open one envelope.
“Is he alive?” I asked.
Elena's eyes softened.
“I don't know.”
I looked up sharply.
“You haven't heard from him?”
“Not in sixteen years.”
“Why?”
“The last number I had stopped working. Letters were returned. The company he worked for had closed.”
“And you never tried to find him?”
“I did.”
That surprised me.
“For a while.”
“Nothing?”
“Only pieces.”
“What pieces?”
“He may have moved west. There was an address in Oregon for someone with his name, but I never confirmed it was him.”
My mind was already moving.
Investigators.
Databases.
Records.
I could have answers within days.
Then something stopped me.
A memory of Priya's voice.
Recovery doesn't care about your schedule.
Maybe truth didn't either.
“I'll find him,” I said.
Elena studied me.
“Maybe.”
I almost bristled.
Then she added, “If he wants to be found.”
That was different.
For most of my adult life, I had assumed access and permission were the same thing.
They weren't.
The realization was unpleasant.
Useful, but unpleasant.
“Did Daniel ever talk about what happened between us?”
Elena hesitated.
“Sometimes.”
“What did he say?”
“That both of you believed your father had chosen the other one.”
I frowned.
“That makes no sense.”
“It did to him.”
“My father clearly favored me.”
“Professionally, perhaps.”
“There was no perhaps about it.”
Elena nodded.
“But Daniel believed your father trusted him in ways he never trusted you.”
I almost laughed.
“He and my father could barely spend an hour in the same room.”
“Exactly.”
I stared at her.
Elena folded her hands.
“Daniel once told me that your father argued with him because he knew Daniel would argue back. With you, he didn't need to.”
The words entered quietly.
Then sank.
My father had praised me constantly.
At least in public.
At home, praise came attached to conditions.
Ethan understands responsibility.
May you like
Ethan knows what's expected.
Ethan won't embarrass this family.
