“I did.”
“Sandy, that’s…”
“I know.”
I stayed standing.
“You invented an office for five days. Why?”
He rubbed his face.
“Frank asked me not to tell anyone where he was going.”
“You could’ve told me you were on leave.”
“You would’ve asked why.”
“I probably would’ve.”
“I thought you’d worry.”
“I worried a lot more after your receptionist told me my husband hadn’t been at work for five days.”
He looked down.
“I know.”
“You didn’t have to tell me Frank’s secret,” I said. “You just had to stop inventing yours.”
Silence.
Finally, he said, “Frank is embarrassed.”
“About reading?”
He hesitated.
“That’s his story to tell.”
I nodded.
“Then tell me yours.”
Months earlier, Frank had called Eliam for help with something on his computer.
An online form was open.
Frank complained that the website was terrible.
“It was,” Eliam admitted.
But the website wasn’t the real problem.
Frank finally confessed that he couldn’turm comfortably read unfamiliar forms.
Marian had always handled those things. Forms. Instructions. Birthday cards.
After she died, Frank developed workarounds.
Then his grandson gave him a birthday card.
“I told him I’d forgotten my glasses,” Frank later told me. “I took that card home and put it in a drawer because I couldn’t read what that little boy had written.”
He enrolled at the learning center.
Eliam had taken a week off to go with him.
“I drive him when he wants a ride, help with the computer exercises, and practice with him.”
“Why pretend you’re working?”
“I thought if I changed my routine, you’d ask questions.”
“So you invented meetings?”
“Yes.”
“Traffic?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“That one was especially ridiculous.”
“It was.”
Frank called that evening.
After a few minutes, Eliam handed me the phone.
“He wants to talk to you.”
“Hello?”
“I hear I caused trouble,” Frank said.
