“You’ll get it,” I said. “Whatever it is. You’ll get it.”
He held onto my arms so tight it almost hurt.
“I have to,” he said.
I thought it was strange that rats could make a grown man cry like that.
I didn’t ask.
Then, after nearly four decades of darkness, he told me.
It was a Tuesday evening in April. I was forty-six. The kids were out. Ethan was away at college, his first year. Rose was at a friend’s house studying for a chemistry test.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, listening to an audiobook.
I heard the front door open. Then his footsteps, fast. Almost running. He came into the kitchen and stopped.
He was breathing hard.
“Babe,” he said. His voice was shaking. “I finally figured out how to do it.”
I took off my headphones.
