Page 51 of Margins

“Protecting my mom,” Elijah huffs.

“And in this case, it was definitely to protect your grandparents too, but yeah. He’d already begun to cut himself off when he wrote the letter.”

“What do you mean?”

Alex shrugs. “Edgar had called them ‘our family’ before, but in that letter—”

“He used ‘your family’ instead.”

“I don’t think he ever stopped loving them, but I’m sure he wished he could.”

Elijah groans. “And somehow we all ended up together almost 30 years later, assuming my memory’s legit.”

“I’m gonna guess it is,” Alex says. “I don’t think this broke them up, I just think it was the reason everything changed.”

“Only one way to find out.”

They turn back to the box, and while there’s no direct response to Edgar’s plea, they do find a note written by Peter after he’s broken the news to James, telling his son that they’ve decided to move to San Diego, and that it will be better for everyone if they keep some distance between them for a while, the world unsafe for people like them, and maybe for anyone who dares to love them anyway.

Tear stains on the paper make Alex certain James reread the note more than was probably good for him.

But James must have agreed, or maybe Annie convinced him it was okay to let them go, or maybe Edgar and Peter just refused to leave it up for debate at all, because it becomes clear when they’ve left, setting up a whole new life for themselves without family close enough to help them rebuild.

“This picture, the one that caught our eye before,” Alex says, holding it up now as they marvel again at whatever secret is being shared between the two men. “It’s from after they moved, so your grandpa probably didn’t take it.”

“Guess they did find new friends,” Elijah mumbles.

Alex looks at him carefully. “You’re upset about that.”

“I—maybe? I don’t know if that’s the right word.”

“Do you want time to think of a better one?” Alex asks.

“It’s just messy. All of it.” Elijah shakes his head and takes a deep breath. “I get why they had to hide in those early days, and I get why they were so careful as they let more people in. I get that they thought they had to take all those same steps backward after my great grandfather was arrested. It scared the shit out of them, having my mom that close when it happened, and knowing it could be even worse the next time would have been terrifying. But I hate it. I hate it because it wasn’t just the two of them anymore. They had a family, and whatever else we read now, we already know it was never the same again after they left.”

“The whole world was kind of a mess those days,” Alex says, though he doesn’t even know what point he’s trying to make.

“Sure, and other people stood up and fought and weren’t lucky enough to have anyone to support them through it. My great grandfather and Uncle Edgar ran away from their support. They could’ve had it all.”

“They could have, but maybe that wasn’t such an easy thing to believe back then. I’m not sure it’s easy to believe now.”

Elijah absentmindedly rubs a hand over his stubbled jaw. “We have to believe it. What else is there?”

Alex doesn’t answer, mostly because he doesn’t have one, but he aches anyway. “We’ve already agreed, at least a couple of times now, that the quiet ones weren’t cowards—just victims. You haven’t changed your mind about that, have you?”

“No, but now we know that their decision to be quiet made my grandparents and my mom victims, too.”

“And you.”

Elijah’s eyes flare with something both indignant and weary. “Me?”

“You lost out on being part of their story, too. And that hurts you.”

The flare dies when Elijah blinks and looks away for nearly a minute.

“Okay, so now what?”

Alex nods toward the coffee table. “Now we read the rest of it, and you try to remember what you told me before—that there aren’t any good guys or bad guys here. Everybody made the decisions they thought were right at the time. I married Cassidy, and Peter and Edgar ran away, and your grandpa never told you about them, and you sold me some books at a garage sale one morning, and maybe some of that was a mistake and maybe some of it wasn’t. The problem with anybody’s story is that you don’t often know the end at the beginning.”

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