Page 129 of The Five Year Lie

He waits for me to go on.

“One day, someone was very mean to me at work. The manager yelled at me in front of everyone.”

His eyes are like saucers. “Was it my daddy?”

“No!” I say quickly. “No, of course not. The manager was a different man.”Your grandfather.Of course I leave that detail out. “It was embarrassing to be yelled at, and most everyone stared at me. But not your daddy.”

Buzz gets up on his knees, kneeling in his seat, listening with his whole body. “He was nice?”

“He wassonice. He took me out to dinner after work. He told me jokes, and he made me laugh. He was kind to me.”

“What else did my daddy do?”

It’s hard to know where to start. And I’m so tired. But Buzz is hanging on every word. “We used to go to the park. You know that big tree where they hang those lanterns? We would meet there sometimes. Then we’d go for a walk together.”

“What else?”

“I took him to the glass studio. He wasn’t very good at it, though.”

Buzz grins. “You let him try the pipe?” Buzz is desperate to try glass, but the studio isn’t safe for a four-year-old.

“I did. He was terrible at it.”

He giggles.

“Your daddy was good at so many things, though. He was a soldier before I met him. He helped other soldiers get rid of explosives that could hurt people. And one time he got hurt, too.”

“Where?” Buzz demands.

“Syria,” I say, before I realize he means where on his body. “That’s a country far away. He got a scar right here.” I reach out and trace a line down his cheek, under his eye. But I stop short of mentioning his limb difference, because Buzz will ask me a thousand questions about it, and I won’t know the answers.

Besides, Drew is so much more than his scars.

“He loved dogs,” I say. “Do you know what a German shepherd is?”

Buzz shakes his head.

“It’s a big, furry dog with black and brown fur. Looks like a wolf. When he was a soldier, some of his friends used dogs to sniff for bombs. So at the end of the day, your daddy got to pet all the dogs. His favorite one was named Coby.”

“What else?” Buzz breathes. He slides a little lower in the seat and then leans against me.

“He was a great swimmer. I took him to the beach, and we jumped in the waves together.” He’d told me he hadn’t been in the ocean since his amputation, so I borrowed my roommate’s car for a day trip. “One night he made me the nicest picnic.”

“What happened to my daddy when he died?” Buzz asks eventually. “Was it an accident?”

I finger his hair and consider my answer. “I’m just not sure, baby. But I’d like to find out. Maybe someday we’ll find out together.”

Night falls, and the bus heads northward. Buzz sleeps.

My stomach is empty and my mind can’t hold on to a thought for longer than a few fuzzy seconds. I ride through the Midwest in a dreamy state of unreality. I’ve made it this far, almost to Michigan, where the bus is scheduled to make a million little stops.

Buzz is tipped to the side, his head pillowed on my lap. My child has never known real pain or fear.

I’m afraid to take my eyes off him. Losing the money is scary, but losing Buzz would end me.

We roll on. It’s the middle of the night when the Greyhound pulls into another station. Passengers file off the bus after the driver announces a forty-minute meal break.

I sit as still as a statue, willing my child to remain asleep.