Relativity by Antonia Hayes Page A

hiding spots were in the back of the house. His palms started sweating. Once a robber broke into Will’s house and took their television, computer, and all of his mother’s jewelry. Mum would be upset if everything was stolen when she came home from work. Or if Ethan was murdered. Maybe it was a murderer.
    Something slid under the door. Then footsteps and the creaky front gate banging against the latch.
    Ethan didn’t move for a while. His body was so still it felt like blood stopped moving through his arteries and veins. Once he was positive the robber wasn’t coming back, Ethan went to the door. There was an envelope, addressed to Mum. The handwritten letters were squished together with an agoraphobic compression, scared of the vast whiteness of the envelope. Ethan held it up to the light to read the overlapping words. He saw his own name and brought the envelope closer to his face. This paper had an exotic smell, of dust and damp and gasoline.
    Ethan knew he shouldn’t open it but the letter had a pulse. It felt alive. Sentences beating and pounding, the paper persuaded him to rip it open and read. He peeled the envelope’s flap, the sticky seal tearing apart in fine filaments like a spiderweb. Squiggly lines turned into words that fell out from the page.
    Dear Claire,
    I’m sorry to get in touch out of the blue like this but I urgently need to speak with you. I sent a letter to your office but I’m not sure you received it. Your old phone number is disconnected. I don’t know your email address. Hopefully this is still your address; Anna gave it to me awhile ago. She said you two weren’t close anymore, which was a surprise. It’s been a long time.
    I want to ask how you are but it feels like a stupid question after all these years. I want to ask how Ethan is too. I hope he is well. He’s my son, but I don’t know anything about him. Maybe I should’ve sent him birthday cards, called him at Christmas. I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to hear from me. And I needed to focus on getting my own life back on track. I often wonder what you’ve told Ethan about me and about what happened. I’m his father. How have you explained the fact that I’m not around?
    I’ve been living in Western Australia for the last few years now. I’m back in Sydney. Dad is really sick. He’s asked to see Ethan.
    I’m staying at my parents’ house. Maybe you could give me a call?
    Mark
    Ethan’s face burned and his legs shook. He read the letter several times. Pen marks moved around the page, words collided with other words, until Ethan couldn’t read anymore. It was just a jumble of ballpoint lines, curves and hoops, dancing across the paper.
    There was a dirty fingerprint in the right-hand corner. Ethan pressed his finger against it. His father’s fingertip. His father’s handwriting. This was an object his father had held, folded, and touched. Just moments before, his actual father had stood at the front door. He’d knocked, sighed, breathed. That shadow against the curtain had been the shape of his father’s body. He was tall. He had loud footsteps. He was real. All that had separated them was a pane of glass and a length of fabric. What might have happened if Ethan had opened the door, would that have broken the universe?
    Western Australia was far away but right now his father was here, in Sydney. The letter was written on the personal stationery of a man named John Hall. Was this his father’s father—his grandfather—who was sick? Ethan didn’t know anything about the other side of his family—what were their names, where did they live, what did they look like, how did they smell? John Hall lived in Woollahra. Ethan looked up the address: 5.6 kilometers away, a fifteen-minute drive, or a one-hour-and-twenty-three-minute walk. All this time he’d had family nearby, but they may as well have