Chapter 59 - The Question Noah Asked
The children knew I had a formal interview scheduled.
We told them before they overheard enough fragments to create something worse.
There were questions about decisions made in my former companies.
I would answer them.
Rebecca would be with me.
Noah listened without moving.
Nico asked whether it was like a school meeting.
“In some ways,” I said. “But the questions concern serious things.”
“Did somebody lie?” he asked.
“That is part of what people are trying to establish.”
“Did you?”
I felt Lena become still beside me.
“I’ve said things in the past without taking enough care to know whether they were true.”
Nico frowned.
“That isn’t exactly the same.”
“No. But it can still hurt people.”
Noah remained quiet until bedtime.
Then he appeared outside our room.
“Are they taking you away?”
I set down the book in my hand.
“Come here.”
He stayed by the door.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
I moved to the edge of the bed.
“The meeting is for questions. Nobody has told me I’m being taken anywhere afterward.”
“But could it happen?”
There were easy promises available.
I had built much of my early fatherhood around them.
Nothing can touch us.
I’ll always fix it.
You never need to worry.
“I don’t know every consequence that may come from the past,” I said. “I won’t make up an answer because I want you to sleep.”
His face tightened.
Lena crossed the room and knelt beside him.
“You will be cared for,” she said. “Whatever the grown-ups need to deal with, you won’t have to work it out alone.”
He leaned against her.
“Why don’t they only ask the people who did worse things?”
I looked at my son.
“Because what I did matters too.”
He stared at the carpet.
After a while, he came to sit beside me.
“Will you come home after the questions?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Can we have dinner?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because dinner was a place he could put his fear.
“Choose.”
He thought carefully.
“Pasta.”
“Pasta.”
The next morning, I dressed without turning the occasion into an event.
No convoy.
No gathering in the hallway.
Lena kissed me beside the front door.
“Listen carefully,” she said.
“I will.”
“And answer the question you’re asked.”
I nodded.
Upstairs, a cupboard closed.
May you like
One of the boys shouted about missing socks.
I left while the house was occupied with being a house.
