Chapter 7 - His Own Name
He heard my footsteps on the gravel and went completely still.
I stopped in front of him. He looked up.
"I read the letter," I said.
"I know." He'd been crying. He wasn't bothering to hide it anymore. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't —"
"Stop apologizing for one minute."
He stopped.
I sat down on the wall beside him. Not close. But beside him.
"Tell me something that has nothing to do with Wesley," I said. "Something about you. Nathan. Something I don't already know."
He looked at me carefully, like he was checking whether it was some kind of trap.
"I'm terrified of escalators," he said.
"Escalators."
"I know how that sounds."
"You've ridden the underground with me fourteen times."
"I counted the steps and held the rail and never looked down." He paused. "It was fine every time. Mostly."
Something loosened, just slightly, in my chest.
"What else," I said.
"I can only cook one specific pasta dish, and I've been making it for you once a week for eight months straight while pretending I had a much wider range."
"I already knew that."
"You knew?"
"The herbs were always in the exact same order every single time. You're not as subtle as you think you are."
He almost smiled. Then he didn't let himself.
"I wanted to tell you," he said. "Every single day for two years, I woke up and thought, today. Today's the day I tell her. And then I'd see you, and I'd think, not yet. One more day of this. One more day of being the person you already believed I was." He looked down at his own hands. "That's the most selfish thing I've ever done in my life. I know that."
"It is."
"I'm not asking you to forgive it."
"Good. Because I don't know yet if I can."
He nodded and didn't push, didn't argue, didn't try to talk me out of my own anger.
"What was your life like," I asked, "before the bakery? Before you found me?"
He was quiet for a moment, thinking it through. "Quiet. I worked in a records office — archival work, restoring old documents, that kind of thing. I was good at it." A pause. "I moved around a lot. Never stayed anywhere long. I told myself it was the job, but it wasn't the job."
"You were looking for me."
"I was working up to looking for you. There's a difference." He glanced sideways at me. "Took me until I was twenty-five to actually start. Three more months to find you after that. And then I stood outside that bakery for forty straight minutes before I finally walked in."
"Forty minutes."
"I almost left twice."
I looked back at the church behind us — the flowers still tied to the door, the ribbon still hanging off the gate.
"Wesley's letter said you were annoying," I said.
"I was five. I was extremely annoying."
"He also said you were the best brother."
Nathan said nothing for a moment. His jaw worked.
"He was wrong about the annoying part too," he said quietly. "I wasn't annoying. I was just trying to keep up with him."
I looked down at the letter still in my hand, then back up at the man beside me.
"I need time," I said. "I can't stand here in my wedding dress and tell you what I think about any of this right now. I need to go home. Take this dress off. Sit with my mother. Read this letter again. Be angry for a while, probably a long while."
"That's fair."
"And then I need to figure out whether what I feel is for a person, or for a name."
He looked at me then. Really looked.
"And if it's for a person?" he said.
"Then we start over. Properly. With your actual name this time."
He went very still.
"And if it's for the name?"
I stood up and smoothed the dress down one more time.
"Then you'll have kept your brother's promise," I said. "And that will just have to be enough."
I walked back toward the church. Priya was already on her feet at the door. I didn't look back.
May you like
But I heard him say it, quietly, to no one — or maybe to Wesley, or maybe just to the afternoon air.
"It won't be enough," he said. "But I'll understand."
