“Did you hear anything else about her?”
“You watch yourself. One day you’re gonna pick a hole in the sky and the universe is gonna fall right through. Then we’ll all be in a fix.”
My father shuffled into the kitchen in his pajamas. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took a box of Shredded Wheat out of the pantry. I could see the yellow wax earplugs still stuck in his ears. The Shredded Wheat meant he was about to start his day. The earplugs meant it hadn’t really started yet.
I leaned over and whispered to Amma, “What did you hear?”
She yanked my plate away and took it to the sink. She rinsed some bones that looked like pork shoulder, which was weird since we’d had chicken tonight, and put them on a plate. “That’s none a your concern. What I’d like to know is why you’re so interested.”
I shrugged. “I’m not, really. Just curious.”
“You know what they say about curiosity.” She stuck a fork in my piece of buttermilk pie. Then she shot me the Look, and was gone.
Even my father noticed the kitchen door swinging in her wake, and pulled an earplug out of one ear. “How was school?”
“Fine.”
“What did you do to Amma?”
“I was late for school.”
He studied my face. I studied his.
“Number 2?”
I nodded.
“Sharp?”
“Started out sharp and then she sharpened it.” I sighed. My dad almost smiled, which was rare. I felt a surge of relief, maybe even accomplishment.
“Know how many times I sat at this old table while she pulled a pencil on me when I was a kid?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question. The table, nicked and flecked with paint and glue and marker from all the Wates leading up to me, was one of the oldest things in the house.
I smiled. My dad picked up his cereal bowl and waved his spoon in my direction. Amma had raised my father, a fact I’d been reminded of every time I even thought about sassing her when I was a kid.
“M. Y. R. I. A. D.” He spelled out the word as he dumped his bowl into the sink. “P. L. E. T. H. O. R. A. As in, more than you, Ethan Wate.”
As he stepped into the kitchen light, the half-smile faded to a quarter, and then it was gone. He looked even worse than usual. The shadows on his face were darker, and you could see the bones under his skin. His face was a pallid green from never leaving the house. He looked a little bit like a living corpse, as he had for months now. It was hard to remember that he was the same person who used to sit with me for hours on the shores of Lake Moultrie, eating chicken salad sandwiches and teaching me how to cast a fishing line. “Back and forth. Ten and two. Ten and two. Like the hands of a clock.” The last five months had been hard for him. He had really loved my mother. But so had I.
My dad picked up his coffee and started to shuffle back toward his study. It was time to face facts. Maybe Macon Ravenwood wasn’t the only town shut-in. I didn’t think our town was big enough for two Boo Radleys. But this was the closest thing to a conversation we’d had in months, and I didn’t want him to go.
“How’s the book coming?” I blurted out. Stay and talk to me. That’s what I meant.
He looked surprised, then shrugged. “It’s coming. Still got a lot of work to do.” He couldn’t. That’s what he meant.
“Macon Ravenwood’s niece just moved to town.” I said the words just as he put his earplug back in. Out of sync, our usual timing. Come to think of it, that had been my timing with most people lately.
My dad pulled out the earplug, sighed, and pulled out the other. “What?” He was already walking back to his study. The meter on our conversation was running out.
“Macon Ravenwood, what do you know about him?”
“Same as everyone else, I guess. He’s a recluse. He hasn’t left Ravenwood Manor in years, as far as I know.” He pushed open the study door and stepped over the threshold, but I didn’t follow him. I just stood in the doorway.
I never set foot in there. Once, just once, when I was seven years old, my dad had caught me reading his novel before he had finished revising it. His study was a dark, frightening place. There was a painting that he always kept covered with a sheet over the threadbare Victorian sofa. I knew never to ask what was underneath the sheet. Past the sofa, close to the window, my father’s desk was carved mahogany, another antique that had been handed down along with our house, from generation to generation. And books, old leather-bound books that were so heavy they rested on a huge wooden stand when they were open. Those were the things that kept us bound to Gatlin, and bound to Wate’s Landing, just as they had bound my ancestors for more than a hundred years.
On the desk was his manuscript. It had been sitting there, in an open cardboard box, and I just had to know what was in it. My dad wrote gothic horror, so there wasn’t much he wrote that was okay for a seven-year-old to read. But every house in Gatlin was full of secrets, just like the South itself, and my house was no exception, even back then.
My dad had found me, curled up on the couch in his study, pages spread all around me like a bottle rocket had exploded in the box. I didn’t know enough to cover my tracks, something I learned pretty quickly after that. I just remember him yelling at me, and my mom coming out to find me crying in the old magnolia tree in our backyard. “Some things are private, Ethan. Even for grown-ups.”