Page 339 - A Little Life: A Novel

street—whom she thought she recognized from somewhere, only to realize
later that she had imagined they might be our son, alive and well and away
from us, no longer ours, but walking freely through the world, unaware that

we might have been searching for him all this time.
I hugged her goodbye; I wished her well. I told her I cared about her. She
said all the same things. Neither of us offered to stay in touch with the
other; both of us, I like to think, had too much respect for the other to do so.
But over the years, at odd moments, I would hear from her. I would get
an e-mail that read only “Another sighting,” and I would know what she
meant, because I sent her those e-mails, too: “Harvard Square, appx 25-y-o,

6′2″, skinny, reeking of pot.” When her daughter graduated from college,
she sent me an announcement, and then another for her daughter’s wedding,
and a third when her first grandchild was born.
I love Julia. She was a scientist too, but she was always so different from
Liesl—cheery where Liesl was composed, expressive where Liesl was
interior, innocent in her delights and enthusiasms. But as much as I love her,

for many years a part of me couldn’t stop feeling that I had something
deeper, something more profound with Liesl. We had made someone
together, and we had watched him die together. Sometimes I felt that there
was something physical connecting us, a long rope that stretched between
Boston and Portland: when she tugged on her end, I felt it on mine.
Wherever she went, wherever I went, there it would be, that shining twined
string that stretched and pulled but never broke, our every movement

reminding us of what we would never have again.

After Julia and I decided we were going to adopt him, about six months
before we actually asked him, I told Laurence. I knew Laurence liked him a
great deal, and respected him, and thought he was good for me, and I also
knew that Laurence—being Laurence—would be wary.
He was. We had a long talk. “You know how much I like him,” he said,
“but really, Harold, how much do you actually know about this kid?”

“Not much,” I said. But I knew he wasn’t Laurence’s worst possible
scenario: I knew he wasn’t a thief, that he wasn’t going to come kill me and
Julia in our bed at night. Laurence knew this, too.
Of course, I also knew, without knowing for certain, without any real
evidence, that something had gone very wrong for him at some point. That