“Can I tell you something?” he said.
“You can always tell me something. That’s the deal now.”
“I know.” He smiled a little. “That’s actually what it’s about.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to me.
It was a letter from Dr. Hale’s office. Ben’s latest test results. He’d gone back every few months that whole year, he told me. Not because he was hoping for anything. Just because he’d promised himself he would never again be afraid to look.
The numbers didn’t mean much to me. But at the bottom, Dr. Hale had written a note by hand.
Still low, but holding steady. Your daughter remains, as I said before, a remarkable piece of luck. Give her my best.
“A remarkable piece of luck,” I read out loud.
“That’s what she is,” Ben said. “Odds of maybe one in a thousand, he said. Maybe worse. And she happened anyway. And the first thing I did when I saw her was call her a mistake.” He shook his head slowly. “I’ll be paying for that one my whole life.”
