Chapter 85 - The Distance Between Addresses
Paul's workshop was still listed in the same town. Mark found its address through a current public business listing, then found an announcement that the owner had retired the previous winter. There was no photograph attached. He read the short notice three times, searching ordinary words for evidence of the sort of man his father might be.
David asked him to slow down before placing a call. A current listing did not establish that Paul lived at the workshop, wanted contact, or was the same person named in the letter. They could verify basic identity without appearing on the doorstep. Mark understood the advice and disliked every minute of obeying it.
Emily was less available that day. Her project team had a review meeting about a vacant building being considered for family services. She had put the date on the calendar a week earlier and arranged the morning with Mrs. Gable. Mark saw her looking between the laptop and his phone and told her he would handle lunch.
"I'm not leaving you alone with this," she said.
"You're going to work," he said. "Those are different things."
She left before he could turn the distinction into a speech. Upstairs, Sam had taken off one sock and hidden it beneath his mattress. Mark spent ten minutes finding it. The absurd little search steadied him more than another hour online could have done. There were problems in the house with answers he could touch.
That afternoon David called back. The workshop had been leased to a younger carpenter after Paul's retirement. The new tenant had confirmed that Paul Bennett had run it for decades and could pass on a sealed personal message. He would not give out a home address. David thanked him for the boundary rather than trying to get around it.
"We can send a brief letter," David said. "He can decide whether to answer. If he does, you can confirm more before sharing private records."
Mark wrote seven pages. He described finding the chest, the report, the conversation with Eleanor, and the odd feeling of discovering a living person hidden inside a past he thought was settled. He described the children, then crossed out their names. He was not ashamed of them. He simply did not want to introduce them to the unknown man as evidence that he deserved a reply.
He read the pages aloud to himself and heard how often he was asking Paul to relieve pain the man had not yet been given a chance to understand. He put them in a folder for his counselor. The letter he actually sent was less than a page.
It gave his name and approximate age, explained that documents linked Paul to Eleanor at the time of the pregnancy, and asked whether he would consider a private conversation. It offered a telephone number and a postal reply address through David. It stated that no money, property, or legal concession was being requested.
Emily read it only after Mark asked her. She changed nothing. "Is this what you want to say," she said, "or what you think will make him like you?"
He looked at the last sentence. He had written that he understood if Paul did not want to answer. He did understand that Paul had a choice, but he would not understand an unexplained refusal without hurt. Mark changed the sentence to say that he would respect whatever answer came. It was honest enough to survive disappointment.
The message went out the following morning. Mark asked for confirmation of delivery to the workshop and nothing more. He did not call the tenant again that afternoon, although the urge sat in him like a physical itch. He put his phone on charge and joined the children on the floor, where Maya was patiently inserting a wooden square into a round opening.
He had been clear about what David could tell the tenant. The message was personal. The man did not need Eleanor's history or the medical report to pass it along. Mark remembered adults discussing him as an object to be managed. He would not begin his search by turning someone's workplace into a source of gossip. It was a protection he could offer before he knew whether Paul would offer anything back.
"That isn't going to work," he told her, then laughed at himself. He turned the shape sorter toward her and let her discover another opening. She looked up after the piece fell through, pleased but unsurprised, as though she had known all along that the object was the problem.
Emily watched from the kitchen table. She was reviewing numbers, and a pencil was tucked behind her ear. Mark remembered how often she had put work aside because he had declared his own worry more urgent. He asked whether she wanted him to take the afternoon shift too. She said yes without apologizing.
By evening, he had checked the phone so often that he made himself leave it on the counter. He could still hear calls there. He told Emily what he was doing rather than presenting himself as a model of patience. She admitted that she had wanted to ask whether she should call David for him.
"We both like a task we can complete," she said.
"This one has another person at the far end."
May you like
They ate dinner after the children were asleep, a simple meal neither had found time to overthink. Mark told her he was frightened of wanting Paul more than Paul wanted him. She did not promise an equal affection. She said she could sit beside him while he found out.
Before bed, he placed a blank sheet of paper in the drawer beside his first unsent draft. He had written to the man who might be his father. The answer belonged to someone else. His own life, with its work and children, was not suspended until it arrived, though learning to live as if that were true would take longer than a night.
