Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Have You Seen Luis Velez?
Just After Midnight
Heaven Adjacent
The Wake Up
Allie and Bea
Say Goodbye for Now
Leaving Blythe River
Ask Him Why
Worthy
The Language of Hoofbeats
Pay It Forward: Young Readers Edition
Take Me with You
Paw It Forward
365 Days of Gratitude: Photos from a Beautiful World
Where We Belong
Subway Dancer and Other Stories
Walk Me Home
Always Chloe and Other Stories
The Long, Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of Pay It Forward
How to Be a Writer in the E-Age: A Self-Help Guide
When You Were Older
Don’t Let Me Go
Jumpstart the World
Second Hand Heart
When I Found You
Diary of a Witness
The Day I Killed James
Chasing Windmills
The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance
Love in the Present Tense
Becoming Chloe
Walter’s Purple Heart
Electric God/The Hardest Part of Love
Pay It Forward
Earthquake Weather and Other Stories
Funerals for Horses
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Trustee, of the Catherine Ryan Hyde Revocable Trust created under that certain declaration dated September 27, 1999.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542042406 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1542042402 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781542042383 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1542042380 (paperback)
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
First edition
CONTENTS
PART ONE: THEN
Chapter One The Tipping Day
Chapter Two Also a Day of Big Changes
Chapter Three Any Family
Chapter Four The Lady
Chapter Five You Know Now. That’s Too Bad.
Chapter Six Asking for a Friend
Chapter Seven I’m Alive
Chapter Eight The Key
Chapter Nine The Belonging
Chapter Ten Pebbles and Contempt
Chapter Eleven The Dark and Uneven Path
Chapter Twelve That’s Not Him
Chapter Thirteen Picking Up Stuff
Chapter Fourteen My Name Is Roy And . . .
Chapter Fifteen What Might Be Coming Next
Chapter Sixteen Promises and Repayments
Chapter Seventeen Tell Them Your Story
Chapter Eighteen Worth
PART TWO: PRESENT DAY
Chapter Nineteen All You
STAY BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART ONE: THEN
SUMMER 1969
Chapter One
The Tipping Day
Is it just me, or does everybody have a day in their life like the one I’m about to retell? I’m talking about those days that act like a fulcrum between everything that came before and your brand-new life after.
It feels a little something like this: When I was a kid, I used to like to bust a move on the playground. Boy stuff, I suppose. I’d run up to the teeter-totter and jump on the “down” seat. The one that was resting in the dirt. Then I’d trot up to the middle—the part that sits safely on the bar. And then, when I kept going, I’d hit the spot where my weight would tip the thing. You know it’s there, you anticipate it. You slow your step just a little bit, knowing it’s soon and you’re about to find it. There’s a delicious little moment of fear in there, but it’s manageable. Next thing you know, you’re being dropped safely back to the dirt, but on the other side.
This day was something like that.
It was the summer of 1969. I was fourteen.
The day started with a letter from my brother Roy. I was always first to the mailbox, and for just that reason. As soon as I saw that airmail envelope with the APO return address—his name scribbled above it: PFC Leroy Painter—I felt like there was open space in my chest, a lightness for a change. It was always that way.
I carried it into the house.
My parents were fighting again.
Except, really . . . I don’t even know why I say “again.” It was almost more like a “still.” That’s not to say they literally fought twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. My dad went to work on the weekdays, and, let’s face it, everybody has to sleep. But it was Saturday morning. They were home, and they were awake, so they were fighting.
I carried the letter upstairs to my room and tried to read it.
It started the way Roy always started his letters to me: “Hey buddy.”
He’d called me Luke all my life, ever since I was born. But the previous summer I’d decided I was Lucas. I was going to go by Lucas, always, and I insisted. I guess it was meant to be a signal to the world that I’d grown up and I wanted to be recognized for it. I think it was a hard change for Roy to make. I’m not saying he didn’t want to call me what I wanted to be called—he wasn’t that kind of brother. I just think it didn’t roll off his tongue yet.
So . . . buddy.
Then I tried to read the rest.
I’d gotten letters from him before with censor marks. Or whatever you call them. Standing here now I’d call them redactions, but I didn’t know that word at the time. Once or twice I’d gotten letters from him with heavy black bars over a line or two, like somebody had taken a black marker and wiped out a few of my brother’s precious words home to me. Well . . . not even “like.” That’s what had happened.
But this letter took redaction into a whole new universe.
I couldn’t make it out. I didn’t know what he was trying to say to me, because too much of it was black. Gone.
It started with complaints about the flies and mosquitoes, especially when he was trying to eat. And then it went off in this really serious direction.
“I know this is kind of upsetting,” it said, “and I’m sorry
