Read Online All the Things We Didn't Say by Sara Shepard - Free Book Online Page A

be such a nice boy, so quiet . And then all that happened, with the mother. What a pity.
    Steven ran his hand over his hair, which he’d recently taken my father’s beard clippers to. It was so short, I could see his skull in spots, pinkish and bumpy. ‘She started it,’ he muttered.
    â€˜It doesn’t matter who started it,’ my father countered wearily.
    The car took the exit for the Brooklyn Bridge. There were the mammoth Lower Manhattan buildings from a different angle than how we saw them from our apartment. Looming atop the Municipal Building was the giant Civic Fame statue, a bronze woman holding a shield, a bunch of leaves, and a crown. The World Trade towers jutted up like two prongs of an electrical plug. Out of habit, my eyes drifted to the North tower-last February, terrorists drove the truck into its underground parking garage and set off a bomb. Steven knew every detail of the incident: the bomb was made of urea pellets, bottled hydrogen and various other things. It was supposed to go up the ventilation shafts and suffocate everyone working there. Officials found bombbuilding plans in one of the terrorist’s suitcases when he entered the country, but he claimed political asylum so they couldn’t arrest him on the spot. Because of that loophole, 1,042 people had been injured, and six people had died. The New York Times listed the names of the dead, but not all those who had been hurt. Every day, when the paper came, Steven leafed through it, maybe checking, though he never explained.
    Since then, whenever he wasn’t doing his NYU coursework, Steven read about airplane hijackings, bus attacks, and suicide bombings, most of which take place in far-flung countries like Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Israel. But Steven thought they could happen here, too. We could be walking down the street, he hypothesized, and boom. No more street. No more us. There was nothing we could do to control it.
    Our car reached the highest point of the bridge. I eyeballed twenty-two flights from the top of the North tower. The entire floor was dark.
    My father jiggled his legs up and down as we descended off the bridge and turned onto the looping road to the FDR. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
    â€˜I’m fine.’
    â€˜Are you sure you’re okay to drive?’ We were headed for a car rental agency in the Village.
    He shrugged.
    â€˜I could drive,’ I volunteered.
    â€˜You don’t know how to drive,’ Steven snapped.
    â€˜Neither do you.’
    â€˜I’ll drive,’ my father interrupted. ‘I’m the one who knows how to get there.’
    He looked longingly over his shoulder for a moment, back toward Brooklyn, pulling in his bottom lip until it vanished.
    â€˜It’s only three days,’ I said in his ear. He nodded quietly, as if this were the vitamin he’d been looking for, as though these few, simple words had made everything better.
    Later, my father became talkative. ‘We couldn’t get that fishhook out of Petey’s foot, so we had to take him to the emergency room!’
    There was a pause. He swiveled his head around at me, taking his hands off the steering wheel. I realized I was supposed to be paying attention.
    â€˜That’s funny,’ I sputtered.
    My father frowned. ‘It’s not funny, Summer. Petey’s dad’s car didn’t go much above forty-five. It took us over an hour to get to the hospital.’
    We passed a truck stop. McDonald’s, Arby’s, Dairy Queen. We passed a field of cows and then a field of horses. ‘This is the real Pennsylvania,’ my father yelled, his voice diffused through the open window. His accent had changed between Brooklyn and here, less than a six-hour drive. ‘I bet you don’t remember this, huh Summer?’
    â€˜Not really.’ We passed a red-painted barn. Someone had spray-painted Kill Niggers on the side of it . There was a big drip line from the