Page 63 of Margins

“Yeah, my mom said he sleeps a lot, and even when he’s awake, conversations are basically one-sided.”

“Exactly,” she agrees.

“Okay, but—” Elijah’s frown is quick, but the furrow of his brows remains strong. “You mentioned that I look like—I mean—Uncle Edgar’s memory is okay, right? He’s not confused?”

Natasha’s eyes are kind, her smile soft. “He won’t mistake you for Peter. First, his memory is probably far too intact for his own damn good. And second, I mentioned that you’d be visiting today, and he reacted to your name. Pretty sure he knows exactly who you are.”

“Reacted how?”

Her eyes get even softer, though the smile is gone. “Edgar has always been—conflicted, I think. Your name carried a lot of weight, and I think he might have curled under it a little.”

“I’m too heavy for him, but you’re still—“ Elijah shakes his head, frustrated, and he looks out the glass doors like maybe he needs the fresh air on the other side. When he doesn’t continue, Alex does his best to finish for him.

“You’re still okay with us visiting with him today?”

“I’m very okay with it,” Natasha promises, her stare gentle when she levels it on Elijah. “I don’t actually think you’re heavy at all.”

She turns to lead them through the corridors that will take them to Edgar’s room, and Alex hears everything Natasha didn’t say—that the past was the heaviest thing of all, Elijah’s name something that contained so many memories in a single breath. His birth had been the breaking point, after all. The moment Edgar finally tried to turn everything back around for their last chance at filling up an empty life he’d made them live for too long.

Alex presses the Poe collection into Elijah’s hands just as they reach the door and Natasha knocks, a courtesy more than something requiring a response of any kind.

Then they step into the room and meet the man whose idea to express his love in the small space left next to other people’s words, an idea from nearly 80 years ago, might be the only reason they’re standing here now. It’s absolutely the only reason Alex is here at Elijah’s side.

Edgar is asleep. Natasha leaves them.

“Alex?”

“I’m right here,” he says from just over Elijah’s shoulder. “Not going anywhere unless you want to be alone with him.”

“No, I—please.”

Elijah steps closer to the bed then, two chairs already set up for them there, and he drops into one, the book resting in his lap. Alex follows easily, his eyes settling into a slow back and forth between Edgar and Elijah, one currently at peace and one very much not, though the rest of their lives have usually been the other way around. Elijah sets the book onto the mostly bare nightstand and lets Alex take his hand, no matter how much it might shake, their fingers threaded together atop the armrests pressed between them.

“You think your mom has talked to him about you?” Alex asks. “Or do you think he just remembers your name from when you used to visit?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. I can’t—I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around the fact that my mom was holding on to this my whole life,” Elijah admits. “After those family visits when I was a kid, only one of which I even remember, she put a pretty swift end to any sort of honesty with me, but I don’t know—maybe that still needed somewhere to go. Maybe she had to have those conversations with someone.”

“And this room might have become one hell of a confessional for both of them.”

Elijah turns his head toward Alex, something of a crooked smile pulling at his mouth. “And here I was working on forgiving them for the choices they made. You think they’ve just needed forgiveness from each other?”

“My family will be the first to tell you that I’m not one to be talking about the absolution of sins when I don’t seem to be properly sorry for committing them,” Alex snorts. “But I think they probably need all the forgiveness they can get, and for the last couple of years, they’ve only had each other.”

“And only my grandparents before that.”

“A family full of people who loved each other so much and did it far too quietly for far too long.”

They fall silent for a bit, Edgar’s soft snoring the only notable sound, but then Elijah squeezes Alex’s hand to get his attention, like Alex hasn’t been focused on him all day.

“I get why Edgar would think he needs my mom to forgive him,” he starts. “I mean, hell, that goes all the way back to the day of the raid. But why do you think my mom would need that from Uncle Edgar? What does she think she’s done to him?”

Alex frowns and catches his lip between his teeth for a few seconds, trying to buy himself the time to piece together the explanation in his head. He knows so little but thinks maybe he’s figured out just a little bit of this.

“She kept the wrong legacy alive,” he murmurs.

“The wrong legacy?”

“It’s like we already said. They fought—all of them,” Alex answers. “Edgar fought for ways to be with Peter, even after he was almost killed. Peter fought to bring him closer, even when the neighbors might have been watching. Both of them fought to find others like them, and then they fought to get all the way out of the margins they’d been born into, helping the community rage against a whole world that might have wanted them written out of the book altogether. And James fought too, first to embrace their love even if he didn’t understand it, then to bear witness to it, long after Peter and Edgar made it so much harder to see.”

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