Free The Price of Silence by Camilla Trinchieri Page B

his head down. “An-ling called me the day she died. My cell was off. She left a message.That’s how I found out about the e-mails.”
    Grief, cold and clammy, gripped my body.“What else did she say?”
    “She left the e-mail company’s number and asked me to wait six months before calling them. She said she would be in China by then and you’d be just about forgetting her after six months.That’s all.”
    “What time did she call?”
    “I don’t know.That day.” His eyes stayed on the drums.
    “Did you read them?”
    He shook his head, releasing a curl of hair from his ponytail. He has to have read An-ling’s e-mails, I told myself.
    Whatever she may have written, it couldn’t matter anymore.
    I reached over and he let me stroke his neck.
    “I waited until now to call the company—”
    “Until the trial started,” I finished for him. In case the e-mails held incriminating evidence.The D.A.’s office was now confident in its case against me. It no longer needed to go on fishing expeditions.
    “I erased them from your hard drive,” Josh said. “Just in case.That’s why I broke in and printed them out. Max has special software I borrowed.What she wrote is gone, wiped out.You’ve got the only copy.”
    “You did nothing to harm her. You hear me, Josh? Nothing. I’m to blame. Only me.” I kissed his hair, his shoulder. I smelled shampoo, fabric softener, maple syrup, the everyday smells of our lives as a family. I must memorize them, lock them inside my mind, I thought. In case . . .
    “She didn’t want you to forget her,” he said.“Maybe the e-mails will make you feel better?”
    Would Josh ever feel better? His whole life was now a question mark.Was I the only one to blame for that? I would have asked God, but I was no longer sure He was there to listen.
    “Of course they will.Thank you, Josh, and thank you for not letting the police get hold of them.”
    He tried to smile.“That way no one knows. I didn’t tell Dad.You and me share secrets now, huh?” He jiggled his leg up and down; his body shook with the force of it. “I didn’t read them, Mom, I swear. I started to, but I couldn’t. It hurt too much.”
    I hugged him.“I threw the St. Christopher medal in the river too.”
    Big, wet slurps of sound broke up Josh’s shaking.“I’m so sorry, Mom,” Josh cried and I drowned.
    That same night, with Tom and Josh asleep, I sat on the rim of the bathtub, behind a locked door and read An-ling’s first e-mail.
    Subj: Fairytales and fantasies Date: 04-06-05 13:32:46 EST From: [email protected] To: [email protected]
    A verse from the long-ago poet Shitao: “Oars striking the water stir the white clouds, setting bits of them afloat.”
    I will stir and set the white clouds, my lies, floating.
    I’ve lied about a lot of things, but never about this. I love you like I love my mother. If I were in China I would go to the Yellow River valley and climb the 7,000 steps of the Broad Way to Heaven on my knees and ask the sacred Mount Tai the favor of your love back. That’s what I’d do. Instead I write e-mails that you’ll get only after I go away. You’ll read them and laugh or cry. I don’t know. What I’m doing is stupid, I guess. I don’t know.
    I’d like to tell you the truth. My truth, if I haven’t lost it.
    I think sometimes people lie for hope.
    A-l
    Josh
    I read what An-ling wrote. I was sure she was going to talk about me, maybe lie about that too, make things look a lot worse than they were. Some of it was pretty embarrassing, not stuff you want your mother to read. Halfway through I made up my mind I was going to delete the e-mails.There was no way Mom would know they existed. I went on reading.
    You think you know someone.You count on that person being the way you’ve made them out to be.You count on it. That’s how you get by. Mom, Dad, Grams, my friend Max,An-ling, they’re with me all the time, sort of like doorways that take you somewhere, lead you