Then he quietly made his way back up to the attic. He wasn’t going up there to snoop. He was just curious. He just wanted to know for himself. Even if he found something else, he might show it to his mom, and talk about it with her. But it would just be the two of them. He didn’t want to upset Gramps. He didn’t want to make him talk about things that he didn’t want to talk about. He didn’t want this mystery, if it really was one, to come between them.

He just wanted to know.

Lucas knew Maria had been right at lunch, and that he should drop this now.

But this time when he went up there, he found the letter.

NINETEEN

Lucas had never paid much attention to his dad’s medical books. Without ever asking, he’d always just assumed that his mom kept them because going to med school and becoming a doctor had become his new passion after he’d given up the dream of being a college basketball player.

“He decided that there was a reason he’d gotten hurt,” Lucas’s mom told him one time. “He was going to help people who’d suffered injuries like his get better.”

But for some reason today, he opened the box with some of those books packed in there, trying to imagine his dad having them in his hands, wondering if he could possibly have loved reading them the way he’d loved reading Chip Hilton as a boy. Or the way Lucas loved reading books now.

Lucas smiled as he picked up the book on top, Orthopaedic Surgery: Principles of Diagnosis and Treatment. He opened it randomly and read a couple paragraphs and found himself wincing, hoping he never had an injury like the one being described that would have to be diagnosed or treated. He picked up another: Netter’s Orthopaedic Clinical Examination.

The third one was Textbook of Orthopedic Surgery for Students of Medicine.

When he opened it, he saw the envelope inside. There was nothing written on the outside of the envelope.

The letter, typewritten, was inside.

Lucas took it over to the desk and sat down, and began to read.

Dear Dad,

This is a letter I might never send. I think of it as my end of a conversation we might never have. I haven’t been able to work much lately, because I haven’t had the strength. I still have a great attitude. I still keep thinking I can beat this thing. You know how stubborn I am.

Lucas stopped, and smiled, and said out loud, “Wonder where he got it from?”

He kept reading.