Chapter 6 - The Question
David did not sleep that night.
At two in the morning, Claire found him sitting in the restaurant dining room.
The lights were off except for the kitchen pass.
She sat across from him.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
“I built this place because of him,” David said.
Claire looked around.
The wooden tables.
Framed Nashville photographs.
A chalkboard menu Noah sometimes decorated.
“How?”
“When Michael came home from prison, nobody wanted to hire him. He got work washing dishes.”
Claire waited.
“He told me once that kitchens didn’t care who you used to be if you showed up on time.”
David laughed quietly.
“I stole that line.”
“You named the restaurant Bennett’s Table.”
“Yes.”
“After the family.”
“Yes.”
“But not him.”
David rubbed his eyes.
“No.”
Claire leaned back.
“You understand why I’m angry.”
“Yes.”
“No. I need you to say it.”
David looked at her.
“Because I lied.”
“Partly.”
“Because I hid him.”
“Partly.”
David exhaled.
Claire’s voice trembled.
“Because I spent fourteen years believing I knew the man I married. You let me tell Noah stories about your childhood while knowing there was a person in half those memories you had deleted.”
David stared at the floor.
“I was ashamed.”
“I know.”
“I thought if I told you, you’d look at me differently.”
“I do.”
That hurt.
Claire did not soften it.
“But not because of what you did at fourteen.”
David looked up.
“Then why?”
“Because of what you did at twenty. Thirty. Forty.”
Silence.
“You kept choosing it.”
The next evening, David finally sat down with Noah.
No Claire.
No arguments.
Just father and son.
Noah was building the family tree on the dining-room table.
David looked at Michael’s name.
“You put him back.”
“He was always there.”
David nodded.
“You’re right.”
Noah kept coloring.
“Did Michael save your life?”
David thought.
“In a way.”
“No. Like actually.”
“I probably wouldn’t have died.”
“Then what?”
“He saved my future.”
Noah set down the marker.
“Same thing to you?”
David looked toward the window.
“At fourteen, maybe.”
Noah nodded.
“He went to jail.”
“Yes.”
“He lost his house.”
“Yes.”
“Grandpa wouldn’t let him come back.”
“Yes.”
“You told him you didn’t have a brother.”
“Yes.”
Noah’s eyes watered.
David’s did too.
“Did you hate him?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
David inhaled.
“I hated what I felt when I saw him.”
“What did you feel?”
“Guilty.”
Noah frowned.
“So you got rid of him because you felt bad?”
David looked away.
“When you say it like that…”
“How else do you say it?”
There was no accusation in Noah’s voice.
That made it worse.
David rubbed his hands together.
“I told myself he was angry. Difficult. That he’d made mistakes too. I told myself we had grown apart. I told myself Dad was the reason he left.”
“But?”
“But I knew.”
“What?”
“That I let it happen.”
Noah stared at the poster.
Then at his father.
“If he saved your life, why did you erase him from ours?”
David stopped breathing.
Noah waited.
The question hung between them.
Simple.
Ten words.
No clever speech.
No adult explanation.
David opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Noah looked back at the tree.
“You don’t have to answer.”
“Yes, I do.”
David’s voice cracked.
He covered his eyes.
For the first time in Noah’s life, his father began to cry in front of him.
Not quietly.
Not politely.
His shoulders shook.
Noah sat still.
He wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to hug him.
So he waited.
Eventually David whispered, “Because I was a coward.”
Noah looked at him.
“That’s it?”
David nodded.
“I could give you fifty explanations.”
“But?”
“They would all mean the same thing.”
Noah thought for a moment.
“Can you find him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you try?”
David looked at Michael’s name.
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
David did not answer immediately.
May you like
That mattered.
Then he said, “I promise.”
