My grief would keep me still.
My mother had read the two of us like ledgers and found the entry in each that, if falsified, would keep us apart forever, and she had falsified precisely that entry, and it had worked for six years, and it would have worked for the rest of our lives if four little boys hadn’t happened to wash their hands in the same men’s room as their father.
“Somebody built this,” I said slowly, the shape of it rising in me like nausea.
“Somebody told you one story and told me the opposite one, and made sure we’d never compare them.
Somebody kept us apart for six years on purpose.”
“Auden—”
But before she could finish, a different phone rang — not my cell, still silenced in the car.
The hardwired line from the building’s front desk, the one that only rang for emergencies.
I picked it up.
The doorman’s voice was tight and apologetic.
“Mr.
Ravensworth — I’m very sorry, sir.
Your mother is in the lobby.
Mrs.