The Inbetween People Read Online Free Page B

cooler days, welcome at first, until the evenings become too short to escape the fact that winter is upon us. Perhaps because I am a gardener I notice it more than most, regret the passing of the glorious summer displays the garden bequeaths us, and perhaps I panic more than other people at the suddenness of the short evenings. There is so much to be done, you see, and I notice that more and more each year. I detect autumn in peoples’ eyes too, the notion that another cycle is almost complete. I used to see it in your eyes, how you hated the coming of winter, and you don’t know how often I have smiled to myself at the irony that you live somewhere where winter is so much harder and colder than here.
    I suppose I should explain why I am writing to you. I am writing because I am worried about our boy. It seems strange for me to use the word “our” in this context because it is four years now since you were part of his life, yet it is meant as a generous gesture, since I admit I must be doing something wrong.
    It seems to me that Avi spends too much time on his own. It is difficult for me to write this, and for some years I vowed that I would not approach you regarding issues with the boy, yet I realise now that I have run into problems. It may surprise you that you are the most obvious person to share this with. I would like to assure you at this point that I try to include Avi in all aspects of my life. Certainly, he walks my gardens with me every evening. I tell him about the plants, their life cycle, the most suitable growing conditions for each plant, the factors that will most adversely affect their growth (or certainly their display!) and what they can expect of us now that winter is approaching. He is always attentive, I can’t fault him for that. He listens and he nods, and later if I ask him about it he remembers, and is able to tell me precisely what I said.
    He is good at his lessons, his teachers tell me that he is never troublesome or rude, indeed he is most polite. He is well-mannered towards the other children, but he doesn’t play with them, or mix with them too much, they say. He is a good boy, they wish every child was like him, their job would be so much easier. And yet there is a kind of unease there, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it is as if they can’t understand him.
    We have fun too. Last month I brought him to a new water park that opened here in the Galilee. We travelled there during the holidays. There were long queues for each ride, I should have anticipated it as part of the autumn holidays we celebrate here in this country, yet we enjoyed it just the same. Once a month we go together to the cinema, and he always gets to choose the movie he would like to see the night before.
    He kills creatures.
    I mean insects. It took me some time to realise this. I didn’t pay enough attention when I found several dead wasps and bees around the place, nothing strange except these had been sliced exactly in half, with a fine blade. Then there were the dead spiders, or parts of spiders with their legs laid out separately from their bodies, and their webs in neat balls beside them. After that there were the cockroaches, but I simply despise those creatures and I was not sorry to see them dead.
    I ignored it until the dead butterflies, and for a long time I did not realise what they were. Small blobs of colour on the doorstep or on the grass, rolled up into untidy balls. I kicked out at them several times, not comprehending what they were until one day I saw him approaching one of my jasmine plants (the one you requested I plant) on tiptoe. It was a bright day, not too far past midday, and I saw him, suspended in gravity, approaching my jasmine plant, creeping towards it, and then his hand, swiping out, fingers clawing the air, catching a yellow butterfly in mid-flight, enclosing it in the palm of his hand, squeezing his hand tighter and tighter, before opening it out, and staring at it, then