Free The Other Side of the World by Jay Neugeboren

Charlie. You’re essentially a good guy, no matter what you think and no matter what you did.”
    â€œCan I quote you on that?”
    â€œNo,” she said, and she hung up.
    Â 
    â€œOh my god!” Trish exclaimed as soon as we entered her house. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”
    â€œWho else could I be?” Seana replied, clearly delighted by
Trish’s uninhibited exuberance, and by Trish herself, who, though overweight, as promised, was as lovely as ever, her long, soft brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her cheeks flushed, her slate-gray eyes aglow with eagerness and enthusiasm.
    â€œDid Charlie tell you that Triangle is my very favorite novel of all time, and that I could recite most of it, word for word, my favorite scenes anyway.”
    â€œThanks but no thanks,” Seana said even as she knelt down slightly and smiled at Gabe and Anna, who were standing next to Trish, Anna holding on to Gabe’s sleeve.
    â€œSo you’re Gabe,” she said. “And this is your sister Anna, right?”
    â€œThat’s correct,” Gabe said. “I’m ten years old, going on eleven—ten going on twenty-three is the way my mother often puts it—and my sister Anna is seventeen months old, but she can walk already, and she can talk when she chooses to.”
    Trish wore black carpenter’s coveralls on top of a button-down light-blue shirt, but they didn’t do much to hide the fact that she’d gained a considerable amount of weight since the last time I’d seen her—twenty to thirty pounds, at least—and I was glad she’d warned me so that I didn’t gape. The house looked the way it always had—as if the people who worked the local flea markets were storing their stuff there: clothing, suitcases, backpacks, dishes, pots and pans, Mason jars, wicker baskets, hat boxes, lamps, catalogs, magazines, and books piled everywhere.
    What I wasn’t prepared for, though, and I saw that it pleased Trish to see my surprise, was Gabe. He looked more like Nick than ever and, the shocker, seemed very sturdy. The constant restlessness that had brought on various diagnoses—ADD, ADHD, autism, Asperger’s—seemed gone. His blue eyes were nearly as black as his hair, which fell to his shoulders—a shock of it lay at a diagonal across his forehead like a crow’s wing—and he stared at me without blinking. I couldn’t shake the feeling—I recalled that this had been so even before he was a year
old—that there was a fierce and determined old man inside him that was staring out from a little boy’s head.
    â€œHey Gabe,” I said, and put out my hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
    â€œYou’re Charlie,” he said.
    â€œI’m Charlie,” I said.
    â€œI don’t remember you, but my mother showed me your photograph.”
    â€œI’m Charlie,” I said again, “and I remember you from when you were a little boy.”
    â€œMy father’s dead,” he said.
    â€œSad to say, yes—your father’s dead.”
    â€œYou saw him die,” he said.
    â€œI saw him fall ,” I said.
    â€œThat’s accurate,” Gabe said, “and I accept the correction. But it’s not useful information.”
    â€œYour father was my closest friend,” I said.
    â€œI know that already,” Gabe said. “Would you be interested in seeing his ashes?”
    Trish leaned toward Gabe, but without touching him. “Not yet, sweetheart,” she said. “Be patient, all right?” She turned to us. “Lorenzo—Mister Falzetti—gave the ashes to me—brought them here in a box one day, said he’d decided they’d mean more to me than to him, and I didn’t have the heart—or strength—to argue. With Lorenzo, it’s always easiest to let him have his way.”
    â€œLike father, like son?” I