Do you understand?”
Jake nodded.
“Because in this house we show respect for our elders. Do you understand?”
Jake nodded again.
“And we appreciate the things they do for us.” Francis gestured at the plate. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble. Eat your breakfast, please.”
For a moment the eerie calm on Jake’s face faded away and the boy looked like he was going to start crying. He stared off to one side again.
Francis’s fist clenched at his side.
Just disobey me once, he thought.
Just once.
But then Jake looked back at him, the calm restored now, and picked up one of the crumpets. In the light up here, the mold was obvious around the edge.
“Yes,” he said. “Sir.”
Fifty-eight
It felt like a transgression as I opened the Packet and looked inside at the contents.
It was an assortment of paper, fabric, and trinkets, much of which overlapped with my own past and memories. The first thing I saw was a colored wristband, pulled taut at the plastic clasp where Rebecca had stretched it over her hand rather than cut it off. It was from a music festival we’d been to in the early days of our relationship, long before Jake had even been thought of, never mind born. Rebecca and I had camped with friends who had slowly drifted away over the years, and spent the weekend drinking and dancing, not caring about the rain or the cold. We had been young and carefree, and as I looked at it now, the wristband seemed like a talisman from a better time.
Excellent choice, Jake.
I recognized a small brown packet, and my vision blurred slightly as I opened it and tipped the contents into my palm. A tooth, so impossibly small that it felt like air on my skin. It was the first one Jake had lost, not long after Rebecca died. That night I’d slipped money under his pillow, along with a note from the tooth fairy explaining that she wanted him to keep the tooth because it was special. I hadn’t seen it again until now.
I replaced it carefully in its envelope, and then unfolded a piece of paper that turned out to be the picture I’d drawn for him: a crude attempt at the two of us standing side by side, with that message underneath.
Even when we argue we still love each other.
The tears came at that. There had been so many arguments over the years. Both of us so similar, and yet failing to understand each other. Both of us reaching out to the other and always somehow missing. But God, it was true. I loved him through every single second of it. I loved him so much. I hoped that, wherever he was right now, he knew that.
I worked my way through the other items. They felt sacred to the touch, but also sometimes oblique in their mystery. There were several more bits of paper, and while some made sense—one of the few party invitations he’d ever received—much of it was incomprehensible to me. There were faded tickets and receipts, scribbled notes Rebecca had made, all so apparently meaningless that I couldn’t fathom why Jake had dignified them as being special. Maybe it was even the smallness and apparent insignificance of them that he liked. These were adult things that he lacked the experience to decode. But his mother had cared enough to keep them, and so perhaps, if he studied them for long enough, he might understand her better.
Then a much older sheet of paper—torn from a small ring-bound notebook, so that one end was frayed. I unfolded it and immediately recognized Rebecca’s handwriting. A poem she’d written, presumably as a teenager, based on how faded the ink was. I started to read it.
If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.
If you play outside alone, soon you won’t be going home.
If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at the glass.
If you’re lonely, sad, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you.
I read it again, the living room receding around me, then examined the writing once more to make sure. It was Rebecca’s—I was certain of it. A less mature version than the one I was familiar with, but I knew my wife’s handwriting.
This was where Jake had learned the rhyme.
From his mother.
Rebecca had known it when she was younger, and she had written it down. I did the math in my head and realized that Rebecca would have been thirteen years old at the time