It was six o’clock. Soon Evelyn would rouse the troops with coffee and eggs. Max felt, in that moment, as if his legs had been swept out from under him, a churn of emotions pulling him out to sea, an unwanted knowledge threatening to take him under. What had Henry been thinking? And Evelyn? And was it true? His heart ached for them and for the ghost of the woman who had always stood between them and, most of all, for Claudia, who hadn’t a clue that her mother had wandered into the woods so long ago and ended herself in a pile of snow. He felt love for his grandparents and their attempt to weave a web to protect their daughter as much as he felt contempt for their duplicity. How could they do it? How could they think they’d get away with it? And they were getting away with it were it not for the four-hundred-page confession Henry planned on dropping only after he’d escaped from the fallout. They were saints, sparing Claudia the cross of a painful secret, and they were cowards, protecting themselves for keeping it.
The question was: now that Max knew, what would he do? To continue to hide the secret from Claudia was, in effect, to relegate her to the same realm of ignorance from which he himself had fought to break free. Sure, she was blissfully ignorant of her ignorance, but did that excuse confining her to the dark? Wouldn’t she want to know her place, her origin? She was strong: if he exposed to her the cracks in her foundation, who better than she to fix them? Then again, what if he brought the entire house down? His mind slowed at this thought as if he’d drilled past all the dirt and muck and finally hit bedrock. Did he want to bring her house down? If his immediate impulse was to rescue Claudia from a lifelong lie, to deliver her closer to the truth of her own story, he had to admit that beneath this lay the obdurate wish to see her suffer as he had. Tit for motherfucking tat.
He meant to stay quiet, to mull over his options as he ate his toast and eggs and, like a true Fisher, pretend that nothing was wrong. But the quiet of the kitchen struck him like a fist, and instinctively he struck back. No sooner had Evelyn ushered him to the table and poured his coffee than he said wincingly, “How’s your eye?”
Earlier that week, Henry, lost in some waking nightmare where everyone before him was a stranger, had slammed Evelyn in the face. She wore the result, a swollen mask of purple and green, with soldierly stoicism, brushing past Max’s question with a pat on his back.
“Where is everybody?” he tried.
“Asleep. I’m surprised you’re up.”
He watched her fuss over the coffeemaker, holding the brown-laden filter like a dirty diaper before dropping it into the trash. “Will you sit?”
She looked as if he’d asked her to dance. “What is it, honey?” She took the seat beside him, her smile brightening but looking even more puzzled as he touched her arm.
“Did you read Henry’s book? The new one?”
“Nobody’s read that. Except for Roger.”
“Did Roger say anything?”
“About the book? Not to me. He and Henry did have a fight. Or I don’t know if I’d call it a fight. They’re old friends. Friends disagree.”
“Why did they fight?”
Evelyn laughed. “I feel like I’m on Law & Order.”
Max smiled nervously, took a sip from his mug.
“I don’t know what about,” Evelyn went on. “Roger liked it from what I gathered. It wasn’t that. But for whatever reason he didn’t think Henry should publish it.”
“And neither of them told you?”
“Oh, I let those two do their thing. I learned a long time ago not to ask questions.”
He might have stopped there. He told himself to stop there. But he’d pushed a rock down the hill, and forward it went.
“Because I read it.”
Evelyn cocked her head to one side, as if she’d misheard. “You read it?”
“Last night. He must have left the safe open, so I read it.”
“Oh. Oh now. We better keep that to ourselves.” She patted his hands and got up to go to the cupboard. The container of flour. The clatter of muffin tins. “I think muffins this morning.”
“Did you hear what I said, Gam?”
“I heard.”
“Henry never told you what it was about?”
Evelyn shook her head.
“All those years he spent working on it?”
“Your grandfather is a very private man. He kept his work to himself.” She paused. “You want to tell me what it’s about.”
“It’s about you.” The rock, gathering mud and sticks and size all the way, rolled on. He couldn’t stop it now if he tried. “About you and Claudia and Henry.” An impossible silence. “And Jane.”
Evelyn set the measuring cup on the counter and stared out the window.
“Gam? Did you hear?”
“I heard you.”
“Is it true?” he asked. Then, when she didn’t answer: “I know.” He shaped the word as if he could cram all his meaning into a syllable that would spare her from hearing more, but the word wouldn’t expand to fit it.
“Jane,” she said. “He wrote about her?”
Max waited a moment to see what she would do. Would she cry? Scream? Fall to the floor and tell him to get out? All she did was stare. He stood up and slowly went to her. Flour dusted her hands, which were clenched into what seemed the frailest fists.
“He said he never would.” Evelyn sighed. “He hated memoirs. He said they were tacky.” She exhaled, a pale, disbelieving laugh. “He breaks the dish. I get to clean it up.”
“Maybe that’s why Roger said what he did.”
“Roger loves Claudia.” She looked into Max’s eyes then, pleading, “This would crush her.”
“You don’t think she deserves to know?”
Returning to Max, snatching up his hands, Evelyn said, “We’ve gone all this time. We’ve lived all this time fearing this — this curtain was going to be pulled back and show her, but it hasn’t. It never was. And now. She doesn’t need to know.”
“Where would I be,” he asked, “if I never knew? If I didn’t know you all existed, where would I be?”
At this, Evelyn bit her lip. Max pulled her to him and held her tight. “You have to tell her,” he whispered in her ear.
“What good would it do?” she cried. “Jane’s gone. Henry’s gone.”
“You have to. You can’t not tell her, Gam. You have to. You have to. Or I will.”
Max commandeered the picnic table, looking over a great pile of papers (held down by a can of Diet Pepsi and a bottle of charcoal fluid) that fluttered in the barely there breeze. He wore the bottoms of his preferred uniform, black camouflage cutoffs, with the tank top he’d worn the day before, and, although the day’s heat felt like an attack, the gray knit cap Evelyn made him for Christmas. He looked, Benji thought as he stared out the kitchen window, like a member of a punk band. Or homeless.
“Do you think he’s all right?” he asked.
Claudia stopped chopping celery and stepped up beside him for a worried glimpse. “No.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“I called Arnav last night. After we went to bed.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.” Then: “What did he say?”
“What I thought he’d say.”
“So this isn’t all—” Benji’s hand spiraled into the air, a gesture of some ineffable creative power that Max possessed (or that possessed Max).