There were other pages too.
Clara helping with homework.
Beatrice holding a terrible-looking birthday cake.
Simon playing the piano.
Elias standing beside a car.
He looked at the last picture.
“Why the car?”
Arthur seemed surprised.
“That’s where you tell me things.”
Elias thought about their recent conversations.
Between appointments.
On the way to school.
At traffic lights, while his son sat behind him and asked questions he did not have to watch his father answer.
He had mistaken time in the same vehicle for time together.
“What kinds of things?”
“When you’ll be home. Who’s collecting me. If I can have something.”
He nodded.
“Would you like some conversations where we aren’t going anywhere?”
Arthur considered.
“Can we make the bridge bigger?”
“Yes.”
“Not a new one. The old one.”
Elias understood that choice too.
They spent the evening on the sitting room floor.
One section collapsed twice.
Arthur became furious when a support piece would not fit.
His father almost reached in and corrected it.
Then he stopped.
“Do you want help?”
“Not yet.”
“All right.”
Ten minutes later, Arthur handed him the troublesome piece.
“Now.”
Elias helped.
Nothing was revealed.
Nobody cried.
The evening did not repair everything.
It gave them something ordinary to return to.
That was useful in a way Elias had once underestimated.
A week later, his uncle asked whether he had acted too quickly.
They were in Elias’s office.
Business papers lay between them, but the older man had not come to discuss business.
“Felicity was humiliated.”
“So was Arthur.”
“She felt threatened by the past.”
“He’s eight.”
His uncle sighed.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” Elias said. “I do.”
