Ian,
I’ve written you a hundred letters and I wonder if you’ll ever read them. But I haven’t written them out, like this, before. You’re the ghost in every room I’m ever in. I don’t suppose that matters. We may not ever meet.
Today, you met Grady, and we had a family meeting about you. Adam didn’t want to, and got angry, but Grady made us all promise to leave you alone and let you settle your own way.
I moved to the basement with Adam for the next...well...I’m not sure. Clyde is here with us. I wanted to write a book down here, and maybe I will, and maybe it’s about you. I’m not sure, and I’m not sure you’d like the be the subject of a book anyway, but I thought you might want to know what happened to us when you came back home, in case you come out of the lab and choose to be with us. Like a time-capsule of letters, maybe.
It’s been 2 and a half years since you were even a little bit home. Almost 3. Where you’ve been for that time is anyone’s guess, and what you’ve been doing is something only you know. I have all these hopes that you’ll tell me eventually, but that’s because I want you to like me. I want you to like me because you’re Adam’s best friend, or anyway, you used to be, and that makes you special, and so you should think I’m special, too. Ideally. But you know, not like...definitively. Or absolutely. That’s a lot of adverbs.
I think I’m afraid of you. I wonder if lots of people were, or are. If you’ve done things to make people afraid. I really want to know. When you came to see me, I wonder if you could tell I was afraid.
During the meeting, Adam said to Brad that you are our brother. You maybe thought you were their brother for a long time, but this might just make it official. And you’re mine, also. My name is Evelyn. You don’t remember, because we never met. You died for the last time the first week I was home.
I’m married to Adam. I was just coming home when you died. I imagine, if I told you this, you would say, “Oh, that was you?” If you remembered at all. Adam and I boxed up your things after you were gone again and your ghost settled inside me.
The basement is good for thinking, and Adam thinks about you often here. We’ve only been above you for the night, but he’s paced the room and stopped at the bed twice, staring. I wonder if he sees the ghosts of you and Jack fucking.
I asked about you all the time. I asked Adam to tell me about you. Right now, you’re asleep with your journal open next to you and you’re wearing a pair of Adam’s pants he doesn’t wear anymore. No one would talk about you that much, except to say you’re French and you’re angry. Maybe no one asked. I don’t know why you came to see me at work. Maybe because I wouldn’t recognize you, and you could talk to me without making it into a melodrama with family and alarms and warnings and all that. Lots of people can make a lot of noise, I guess.
Adam put a tally mark on the wall up here next to, “Anders/Matthew” Days she’s been gone, officially, and days you’ve been here, officially. I think it’s strange you started to come home the day she started to leave. October 5th. Now, who knows? She said she’d be gone the weekend, like a mother who says she’ll be right back and isn’t. Eventually we have to move on.
Most of Grady said was that we needed each other and we needed to be home together. I wanted you to be a part of that, and I think maybe you can be, in time.
I played some songs for you in the lab. Clyde said you probably haven’t been able to choose the music in a long time, so I hope you can soon. Maybe Adam can move the Victrola down there for you. When I moved into the old house, there were boxes of records in the attic and I wonder if they were yours. They must still be there.
I guess I’m hopeful that you being here will also help the situation with Joshua. I’m not sure why, but maybe by comparison, he looks easier. I’m not sure if I’m joking about that. I asked Bonnie last night, I don’t know how we can come back from everything that happened with Joshua in the last 2 months, and there you were underneath us all, stewing in what must be years.
Adam doesn’t talk about you much because he missed you. He cried when he came up tonight, and I asked him what was wrong. He said he’d forgotten how you smell. Maybe it’s good, that that hasn’t changed, when possibly everything else has. I guess I wonder how bad of a person you could really be if Adam loves you so much, even though he’s pretty terrible. I made dinner for you, so it’s me you can blame if it sucked. Me and the basement, shelling out Kraft mac and Rainbo bread until the world explodes.
I guess I’m writing because I’m wondering what you’re doing down there. There’s things I think you should know and I’m not sure you do. But Adam, he stayed up with you and he would’ve told you I think. That you jumping off that building meant you could come home. And that you’re a dragon, and you belong here.
Love,
Annik
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