He wrote to no one in particular. He wrote for himself. He wrote about the Chesapeake and the Boston Whaler and the boy who had been Andrew before shame made him David Merrick. He wrote about plaid shirts and porch steps and the sound of bare feet on asphalt at dusk. He wrote about Monique's cream blouse and her cold fingers on his wrist and the word don't that had meant not yet and then had meant now. He wrote until the early hours, and when he was done he had something that was not a letter and not a eulogy but a record — a way of saying, to whatever listened, that Andrew Grant had been here, twice, and that both times had mattered.
In July the accounting firm offered him a promotion that would have meant longer hours and a shorter fuse. He declined. He told his manager he was protecting his evenings. His manager, who had children of his own, understood more than Thomas explained. The evenings on Laurel Court — fractions, leftovers, the occasional burned brownie — had become the architecture of a life he was no longer willing to trade for a title on a business card.
In August, on the anniversary of Andrew's first disappearance, Thomas and Monique and Ava went to the beach at Sandbridge for the day. Ava collected shells with scientific intensity. Monique read a novel under an umbrella. Thomas walked the tide line and let the Atlantic, which was not the Chesapeake but was water enough, revise his understanding of edges. That night, sun-tired in the Ellison kitchen, Ava said, "I think Dad would have liked today."
"I think so too," Monique said.
"And the letter man," Ava added carefully. "Andrew. Do you think he liked beaches?"
Thomas glanced at Monique, who nodded almost imperceptibly — permission to speak the name, to let a little more of the story into the room.
"He loved the water," Thomas said. "Maybe too much. Or maybe just enough, in the end."
Ava nodded, satisfied, and asked for ice cream, and the evening continued in its ordinary holiness.