She was quiet for a long time, then she picked up her purse from the floor and dug through it.
“I don’t know if I should show you this, but after your father died and we cleaned out the cabin so you could move in…I found this.”
She passed him a piece of white paper folded into quarters. The paper had been folded and refolded so many times it had gotten soft. Carefully, Rafe unfolded the sheet and saw a few lines written in pencil.
“What is this?”
“Read it,” she said.
In my dreams I’m young again.
A young father of a young son
My young son sits at the table
Teaching himself to draw Wolves from a book.
In the dream, I pat him on the back with one hand and close the book with the other.
Come on, I say, I’ll teach you to hunt Wolves.
He puts his pencil down. He’d follow me anywhere.
Lesson one I say—find a wolf.
I wake up an old man in an old world
I want to call my boy, still young somehow to say I’m sorry I closed his Book of Wolves.
To say I’m sorry I was the only wolf he found.
Lesson one I’d say—don’t be like me.
“Oh my God,” Rafe said. “Dad wrote a poem.” It was his handwriting, his missing commas, his voice. He pictured his father with his carpenter pencil, sharpened with a box cutter, scrawling these words on the back of the electric bill. “My father, Bill Howell, wrote a poem.”
“He wrote me a couple when we were young, and he was trying to get my attention. I thought there’d still be poetry after we got married, but there wasn’t. Maybe he knew he was going to die soon, and he felt like he had to say something to you but didn’t know how.”
She turned the page over to show that the bill was dated the week before he died.
“Wish he’d said all that to your face instead of writing it down.”
“This is better. Can I keep it?”
“He wrote it for you.”
Rafe folded the paper and slipped it into his wallet. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to keep it. Maybe for the same reason he still wore Jeremy’s St. Anthony medal. A reminder that sometimes miracles happen.
“Jeremy’s going to need some help when he gets out of here,” she said. “I’d be happy for him to stay at the house.”
“He’ll stay with me,” Rafe said.
“At the cabin? You only have the one bedroom.”
“I know.” He waited for his mother to say something about that, but whatever she said, nothing would change his mind. Still, he barely breathed, the old fear rising up again. Then his mother gave a little chuckle.
“Your father would spin in his grave,” she said, then rested her head on his shoulder. “Oh, let him spin.”
Chapter Forty-One
Three days later, Jeremy was released from the hospital. A full recovery would take months, but he would heal better at home, they said. They had said the same thing to Rafe’s parents when he was in the hospital after being lost. But this time was different. Better.
This time when they left the hospital, they left together.
Rafe drove slowly down the back roads to Starcross Hill.
“Dude,” Jeremy said, “Grandma was slow but she was old.”
“You’re not funny. And I’m going thirty.”
“The speed limit’s fifty.”
“The limit’s fifty,” Rafe said. “You can go under.”
“I’ll die of old age before we get home.”
Rafe gave in a little and pressed down on the gas, thinking of how often his father had scolded his mother for driving too slowly on the back roads. Precious cargo, she would reply.
They didn’t say much during the rest of the trip. Jeremy was still exhausted from the pain and the painkillers. His color was better, though. He didn’t look like a walking corpse anymore. When he rested his head against the passenger window and nodded off to sleep, Rafe eased his foot off the gas again. He didn’t want to accidentally wake Jeremy when he took a tight corner.
