Page 18 of Whistle

They both got ready for bed, Annie promising to come in and see him before he turned out his light. About a year earlier, Charlie had announced he was too old to have a bedtime story, but since hisfather’s death, he’d offered no protest when his mother offered to sit on the edge of his bed and read to him.

He was under the covers and had a selection in his hand when Annie came in. Rather than sit on the edge, she got right on the bed. “Scootch over,” she said, settling in, her back on the headboard. Charlie handed her the book, an old, weathered paperback, yellowed along the edges.

“What’s this?” Annie asked. It certainly wasn’t one of the books Finnegan had arranged to have put on the shelf in Charlie’s room.

“It’s one of Dad’s,” he said. “I grabbed it from home.” The book wasThe Golden Apples of the Sunby Ray Bradbury.

“Your dad loved Bradbury. He’d had this book since he was a kid. It’s a collection of short stories.”

Charlie nodded, suggesting he already knew. “Dad read me some.”

“He did?”

How did she not know this? A range of emotions washed over her. Sadness, guilt, regret. Had she been letting Charlie down, not exposing him to more of his father’s interests?

“Can you read me ‘The Destrian’?” he asked.

“The what?” She started thumbing through the book, looking for the story. “You mean ‘The Pedestrian’?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said.

She read aloud the classic story about a man who draws the attention of the authorities because he prefers to take an evening walk over staying home and watching television, which is what everyone else does. She asked Charlie why he liked it.

He had to think. “I don’t know. Because it’s weird?”

“I think it was one of your father’s favorites because it was about a man who didn’t want to follow the crowd.”

“What crowd?”

“He didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing. He wanted to do his own thing. Your dad was like that. His parents weren’t crazy about him becoming an artist, an animator. All the kids he knew got so-called normal jobs when they grew up, like accountants or car salesmen or plumbers, and those are all good jobs because we need all those people doing what they do, but when you say you want to be an artist or a writer or a singer, parents get worried you won’t be able to make enough money to survive.”

“You make lots of money.”

Annie smiled. “I do okay. But it wasn’t always like that. I’m just saying your dad didn’t let other people, even his parents, stop him from pursuing his dream. Let me put it another way. Pretend every kid you know hates Lego. There’s a new law that you’re not evenallowedto build Lego. What would you do?”

Charlie thought about that. “I would still want to play with Lego.”

“There you go. You’d stick with it because it’s what you love. And that’s what your father did, becoming an animator when others weren’t so sure it was a good idea.”

Charlie nodded, getting it. “So no matter what I want to be when I grow up that would be okay?”

Annie felt herself about to be tested. What was he going to come up with? Rodeo clown? An astronaut? God forbid he said politician. “Probably. What do you want to be?”

“I just want to always be your son and stay with you when I’m old.”

Annie gave Charlie’s shoulders a squeeze and managed to hold it together until she got back to her room.

She’d packed several books—she was saving the Patchett and instead was diving into a Stephen King novel from thirty years agocalledNeedful Thingsshe’d always meant to get to—and soon found her eyes drifting closed. But once she settled under the covers and flicked off the light, she couldn’t get to sleep.

There were no noises.

No sirens, no honking horns, no boisterous people walking along the Bank Street sidewalk, whooping it up. No distant sounds of jets coming into or leaving La Guardia or JFK. How the hell was someone supposed to get to sleep when it was this quiet?

But sometime after midnight, she finally drifted off.

And Evan came to her.

“Evan, come back inside. We’re ten floors up. If you step off thatledgeyou’ll be very badly hurt. Your mom and dad won’t be pleased. They’ll be angry. With you, and with me.”

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