The Letters Behind the Wall
Chapter 04 - The Letters Behind the Wall
Ethan did not sleep.
At seven in the morning, he returned to the garage alone.
Mason was sitting on a stool near the motorcycle.
He looked exhausted.
“Mom says you were released two months ago.”
“My conviction was vacated. The state has not apologized yet.”
“What changed?”
“A law student found the unrevised fire report in a retired investigator’s files.”
Ethan looked at the letters on the workbench.
“Why are some addressed to Hale?”
“Grant legally changed your name after he married Laura.”
“You knew?”
“I followed whatever news I could get.”
Mason opened the top letter.
It had been returned unopened.
“Grant visited me once after the wedding. He said Laura wanted you to have his name. He said if I contested anything, he would make sure she lost custody.”
Laura appeared in the doorway.
“He told me Mason threatened to take you.”
Both men looked at her.
She crossed the garage and stopped near Grant’s photograph.
“He turned our fear against each other.”
Ethan felt anger pressing against his ribs.
Not only at Grant.
At Laura.
“You never checked?”
“I tried to visit the prison.”
“And?”
“Grant had a deputy stop me outside the county line. He said Mason had placed me on a no-contact list.”
Mason shook his head.
“No such list existed.”
Laura looked older than she had the day before.
“After that, Grant found every letter I wrote to Mason. He burned them in the fireplace.”
Ethan looked toward the blackened brick in the garage’s rear corner.
Then he noticed one panel of the wall sat unevenly.
He pulled it loose.
Behind it were canvas mail sacks.
Hundreds of envelopes.
Mason’s letters.
Birthday cards.
Photographs drawn in prison art classes.
A handmade paper medal sent when Ethan enlisted.
A note written after Ethan’s first deployment.
You do not know me, son, but I am proud of the man you chose to become.
Ethan lowered himself onto the concrete floor.
May you like
Grant had not merely kept Mason away.
He had built an entire fatherhood inside a wall and let Ethan believe it never existed.
