Page 50 of Margins

“Maybe it got to be too much once they had my mom to protect, too.”

“Okay, yeah, I guess I see your point, but as of now, they’re still including them in family celebrations, and your mom’s little scribbled name is on their cards.”

“Yeah, but she was still young and just barely reaching an age where she’d remember more details about them—she would’ve been seven, then turning eight throughout this stretch. And she certainly wouldn’t have known enough to clock that they were different before that, especially if the whole family was calling him Uncle Edgar, the same way I heard about him later,” Elijah points out. “So maybe my great grandfather and Uncle Edgar started feeling free to get more involved with the community around them, and my grandparents got scared about how it might affect the family as my mom got older.”

“What about your grandpa’s birthday party in San Diego?” Alex asks, stirring the packets of chocolate powder into the milk he’s just heated in the microwave. Nothing about it is fancy, but it’ll do for tonight, and he tosses the spoon into the sink when he’s done, Elijah still piecing the story together.

“Maybe a late attempt to mend fences before my great grandfather died?”

Alex returns with the two mugs, and they sit far enough away from everything to be confident that they won’t spill on anything that matters, but Alex only takes a quick sip before he tips his head toward Elijah.

“I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong about anything, and I guess we’ll find out soon enough, but you knew your grandparents pretty well. Do you really think it’s a decision they would have made?”

Elijah eyes him carefully. “You’re a father. Would you cut off any of your family to protect your kid?”

And yeah, he absolutely would, though he doesn’t bother to say that out loud because he can tell Elijah knew the answer before he asked the question. Alex turns to set his mug down on an end table, Elijah doing the same on his side a minute later, and they look through another half dozen smaller things before they get the beginning of their answer, so close to what Elijah was guessing, and somehow not at all what they expected.

My dear sweet Peter, you are the love of my life and I have never been as sorry for that as I am now. All these years I’ve sought a way for us to fight for a place in this world, and I stupidly thought we might have found such a small, safe way we could do exactly that. I was wrong.

I will document every error here because I deserve no less.

Helping our community organize and strengthen through passed messages and clandestine meetings brought me back to those days in your office and all the nights we spent pressed up against old warehouse walls. All the years when we’d had nothing but each other felt like they’d led us to a time when we could help others have so much more. Honestly, I think you felt it too, but I’ll take all the blame for us both. I should’ve known one day I’d push too far.

Spending time with your family has meant the world to me, too. The way James has never once hated me when it would’ve been so easy for him to do just that. Annie, sweeping into his life and then tumbling into ours, her laughter brighter than a thousand suns. And then beautiful Laura. My little rose petal. I’ve always loved her like she was my own, and then I watched the confusion in her eyes and hurt I couldn’t chase away when you were gone, and I will never forgive myself for that.

It was supposed to be so easy, a favor done under the midday sun. Lunch with Laura, and the promise of ice cream after. Maybe even a walk in the park. A little girl out with her grandfather and uncle, just as she had been plenty of times before, but this time, unlike all those others, her grandfather slipped away to speak to the owner of a bar only minutes away. Her grandfather, then unable to return to their table.

I knew in my heart something was wrong before you could even be considered late. There was a chill in the air and a tightening in my chest, and I smiled for her because there was nothing else to do, but I knew. My darling, I knew.

It’s been a few days now, and while it’s been a reality for far too many of our friends, I still can’t believe you were arrested in a raid, however small. I can’t believe it was only your ability to trade decades of goodwill, an unimaginable amount of money, and the career you loved so much that has allowed you to be close to me now.

Why are you close to me now?

I know why, because it is the same reason I can’t leave you, but there is something I can do. There’s something we can do. We can apologize to your family and thank them for all they’ve done for us, and then we can move away. We should move away. We can live our lives as we have chosen, but we should do it alone. Maybe we can find others somewhere new, but it should always be people who are taking the same risks for all the same reasons. Our loved ones should never have to suffer because we made the choice to be selfish.

Please, Peter.

I love you too much to know how to do this any other way.

Yours, Edgar

Alex doesn’t know how Elijah made it through the entire letter without breaking in two, but Alex watches him crumple now and is gentle when he pulls the letter from Elijah’s hand. There’s nothing to say, not right now, so he only pulls Elijah into him and wraps them up together while they absorb this latest chapter.

Maybe the most important one.

Because that had been the missing piece, the answer to their biggest questions. After all those small steps forward, however quietly brave they might have been, Peter and Edgar had to have had a reason for ending up where they did, away from the family with a once open secret locked up tight again. And it was Edgar who pulled them back into the darkness after wanting the world to see them for so damn long.

Alex has to admit he hadn’t seen that one coming.

There’s still more to read, of course, and Alex thinks they’ll get back to that soon, but Elijah’s breath is still ragged, and as much as Elijah has promised to be patient with Alex upstairs, Alex will be at least as patient here. The hot cocoa becomes cold, but they barely move.

When Elijah finally does, Alex starts to untangle them. “Talk, read, or sleep?”

Anything else seems close to impossible.

“Would you have done the same thing? Would you have wanted to leave everything behind?”

Alex thinks about it for a second, then he nods. “I’m not sure it’s a whole lot different from what you asked me before, about whether I’d cut off my family to protect my kid. Edgar just did it the other way around—suggesting that they cut themselves off—but the motivation was essentially the same.”

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