Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
I hesitated but Ethan’s hand was already on the door. He pushed it open and walked in.
I followed, ready to steer him back out if he started looking too unsteady. He didn’t. He moved slowly, eyes dragging over the shelves, the photographs, the old maps on the walls. His face changed, the tension shifting from I’m going to throw up to something quieter, deeper.
His gaze caught on the hutch behind the desk. On the top shelf, tucked to one side, sat Nate’s old backpack—the bug-out bag Silas had kept like a relic.
Ethan stopped. For a heartbeat he didn’t move at all. Then he stepped forward, reached up, and took it down with both hands.
“I bought him this,” he said quietly.
I opened my mouth. “Maybe we should—”
He was already unzipping it.
Pages rustled as he pulled out a worn notebook of old drawings. Ethan flipped through them, fingers trembling slightly. He cursed under his breath. A harsh, broken sound.
“Ethan,” I said softly. “You don’t have to—”
“I know what this is,” he cut in. His voice wasn’t sharp, just . . . frayed. He kept his eyes on the notebook. “This is what a man keeps when he regrets how he handled something. When he can’t let go. I have a lot I regret as well.”
I swallowed. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
He laughed once, humorless. “No. I don’t. That hasn’t stopped me from owing people a lot of things, though, has it?”
He set the notebook down on the desk with care, like it might break. His hand spread flat over the worn wood near it, palm pressing as if he could reach through and touch the past.
“When we were kids,” he said, still looking down, “Silas was a great older brother. Not perfect. But better than most. Smart. Soft in the ways that mattered. Hard in the ways that kept us alive.”
He drew in a rough breath. “Our father . . .” He shook his head.
“He was an angry man. Anger turned to violence more often than not. And Silas—stubborn idiot—stepped in front of it. Every time. If Dad was going to hit someone, he hit Silas. Silas made sure of it. Kept me and Claire in the shadows. That was his gift to us.”
My stomach twisted. I thought of Nate on the barn roof, quiet and competent and careful. Of the way he never raised his voice when he was angry. How calm and kind he was.
“Maybe that’s why I hated him so much when he left for college,” Ethan went on. “He walked out the door and suddenly there was nobody between us and our father. Except me. And I wasn’t Silas.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Winter light from the window hit the silver in his hair, the lines around his mouth.
“I stepped in,” he said. “Did my best to protect Claire. Took my hits. But I’d spent years watching Silas absorb that fury like it was his job.
I didn’t have his . . . whatever it was.
Resilience. Hope. Stupidity.” His mouth twisted.
“When I finally started hitting back, I thought maybe that would fix it. Show everyone I wasn’t afraid of anything. ”
He shook his head. “It didn’t fix anything. It just lit the fuse.”
He stared at the desk, at nothing.
“I’m the reason our father left us for good,” Ethan said softly.
“I’m the reason he went on that bender. Got in that car.
Wrapped it around a tree. Our father. The great patriarch.
” He huffed out something like a laugh. “Some people said Mom died of a broken heart when he went. That’s bullshit.
She was relieved. We all were. Her heart broke long before that. Watching us.”
Silence curled around his words, heavy and strange. I shifted my weight, fingers tightening around my phone. Part of me wanted to text Nate. Now. Please. Another part knew if I interrupted, Ethan might never say any of this again.
“I didn’t even understand how angry I was with Silas for leaving,” he said, “until I saw him with Melinda.”
His jaw clenched. His eyes moved around the room like he could see ghosts of them standing in the corners. Laughing. Alive.
“He was happy,” Ethan said. “So fucking happy. Without us. Without me. While I was in still home, drowning in guilt that should have been his. I loved him. And I hated him. I hated him for finding a way out when I stayed and bore the consequences like a second skin.”
My throat burned. I thought of all the ways I’d justified my father’s choices over the years. All the anger I’d never dared turn toward him.
“I never wanted what happened to Silas,” Ethan said sharply, like he could hear my thoughts. “Don’t think that. I never wanted anything bad for him.”
I believed him. It didn’t make the hurt in his voice easier to hear.
“I should’ve been there when he lost Melinda,” he went on.
“When he got that call from the hospital. I should’ve been the one to hold him up when he broke.
But I was just so . . .” He shook his head slowly.
“So done. With grief. With losing. With feeling like the universe kept tallying up everything I loved and setting it on fire.”
He gave me a wry look. “The therapist I hired after my divorce said that’s ‘catastrophic thinking.’ I called it Tuesday.”
Despite everything, a short, helpless laugh escaped me.
“I was an asshole for a long time,” he said. “Didn’t see it. Didn’t want to. Work was easy. Work made sense. People didn’t.”
He turned away from the desk, leaning back against it.
His fingers curled over the edge hard enough that his knuckles whitened.
“Then I met Nate’s mother,” he said. “She wasn’t the best woman.
She wasn’t the worst. We weren’t good together, but we weren’t a horror story either. And then there was Nate.”
His lips pressed together, fighting a tremor.
“Having him felt like a second chance. Like maybe I’d do something right that wasn’t tied to profit and loss for once.
But I wasn’t a good husband. I don’t know that I was a good father.
I tried. God, I tried. And still I ended up with divorce papers in my hand wondering how the hell I’d broken another thing I loved. ”
I heard myself whisper, “Ethan—”
“I was so angry,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Angry at her. At myself. At my father. At Silas. At God. Name it, I was mad at it. And somewhere in the middle of that rage, Nate walked into the room and asked me for something. I don’t even remember what.
A permission slip. Help with homework. A hug.
I don’t know.” He swallowed. His eyes were wet now, reflecting the dull light of the room.
“I raised my hand,” he said. “Like I was going to hit him.”
The air left my lungs.
“I didn’t,” he added quickly. “Didn’t touch him.
But I saw his face when I did it. The way he froze.
The way his eyes closed down. And I knew.
I knew I had crossed a line, even if I didn’t finish the step.
” His voice shook. “That’s when I brought him here.
To Silas. I told myself it was temporary.
That I just needed time to get my head on straight.
But the truth was . . .” He exhaled. “The truth is I brought him to the one person I trusted to protect him from everything. Even from me. Especially from me.”
I blinked hard. My vision blurred around the edges.
“I got a therapist,” he said, faintly amused, like he couldn’t quite believe it even now.
“I dug deep. Dug deeper. Dug until I hit all the ugly, rusted things I’d buried and started hauling them into the light.
I worked the steps. I made amends where I could.
I thought . . . okay. I’m better. Not healed. Not perfect. But better. Safe enough.”
He glanced around the room. “And then I came back for Nate.” He let out a long breath.
“I saw him here,” he said quietly. “With Silas. On this farm. He was happy. Happier than I’d ever seen him with me.
No matter what I bought him. No matter what school I put him in.
No matter how hard I tried to be better. He glowed here.”
He laughed, a soft, bitter edge under it. “I didn’t understand. I just knew I felt like I was losing him. Again. To Silas. To this place. To something I hadn’t given him. And all that old resentment I thought I’d killed woke up and said, ‘Oh. There you are.’”
I didn’t like where this was going. Not one bit.
“I said some hateful things to Silas that day,” Ethan murmured.
I shook my head. “You don’t have to tell me—”
“I do,” he said. “Maybe not for you. For me. For him. For Nate.”
He pushed off the desk, then sat down in Silas’s chair like his legs wouldn’t hold him up anymore.
His hands came up to cover his face. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled.
“The last real conversation I had with my brother,” he said, “I accused him of trying to replace the child he had lost with my son. I told him Nate wasn’t some second chance at fatherhood.
That if he thought he could just . . . slip into my place .
. . he was delusional.” He lowered his hands.
His eyes were red. “It was cruel,” he said simply.
“And I knew it. I knew it as the words were coming out of my mouth. I wanted to hurt him because I hurt. And because some part of me still hadn’t forgiven him for leaving me with our father.
So I used the worst thing that had ever happened to him like a knife. ”
Tears burned hot at the back of my eyes.
“I should’ve apologized,” he went on. “Every day after that, I thought, I should call him. I should drive here. I should show up. But it felt too big. Too ugly. Like saying ‘I’m sorry’ wasn’t enough and so instead of trying, I just did nothing.”
He let out a breath that sounded like it had been stuck in him for twenty years.
“It was easier to pretend he didn’t care about Nate as much as I did.
That this place wasn’t really good for him.
That I’d been justified in what I said. And then one day, I looked up and years had gone by.
Almost two decades. And Claire called and said he was dead. ”
His voice went very quiet.
“He didn’t want me here when he was sick,” Ethan said. “Didn’t want me at the hospital. Didn’t want me carrying his casket. I earned that. Every inch of it.” His mouth twisted. “Didn’t make it hurt less.”
The room felt too small for all his grief.
“I didn’t want Nate to come here,” he said, voice cracking.
“Because I didn’t want him to see me through Silas’s eyes.
To see all the ways I failed him. To learn the truth about that last conversation.
I thought if I kept him away from this place, he’d never know just how badly I’d screwed it all up.
But I can’t . . .” He shook his head. “I can’t live like that anymore.
I’m tired of pretending my silence is justified.
” He looked at me then, eyes raw. “I’m going to tell him,” he said.
“I’m going to tell him Silas loved him. I’m the reason he didn’t grow up with this farm in his life.
I said things I can’t ever take back. He deserves to know the truth. All of it.”
I opened my mouth to answer—and froze.
Because over Ethan’s shoulder, in the doorway, stood Nate. He didn’t move. Didn’t clear his throat or step in. Just watched. His face was tight. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. Long enough.
My heart lodged somewhere behind my ribs. I met his gaze. For a second, everything else fell away—the room, Ethan, the sounds from outside. It was just him and me and a lifetime of secrets scattered on the floor between us.
He gave the slightest nod.
Trade with me.
I squeezed Ethan’s shoulder lightly. “I’m going to get you some water,” I said, even though all three of us knew I wasn’t. “Nate will sit with you.”
Ethan blinked, following my gaze toward the doorway. When he saw his son, something in his expression shattered and the proud man who’d arrived on the farm a short time ago looked defeated.
I stepped past Nate. As I did, I stopped. Turned. Threw my arms around him without thinking and hugged him. He caught me automatically.
For a heartbeat, I held on like I was the one trying to stay upright. Like if I let go, all of this would blow away—farm, town, family, him. I pressed my cheek to his chest and felt his heartbeat, steady and strong under my ear.
“You’re going to be okay,” I whispered. I wasn’t even sure which of them I meant it for.
He squeezed my waist once, hard, and buried his face in my neck.