I Loved Them Honestly, and Eventually They Answered

I was sealing a customer's book in acid-free tissue when my phone rang at 11:42 p.m. on December 30. The name on the screen stopped my hands. Owen. I hadn't spoken to my half brother in almost four years. Before that, our contact had been birthday texts, holiday greetings, and the occasional photo he sent through a social media account I rarely checked. I'd answered each one carefully, never asking him to choose between me and our father. Then one birthday message went unanswered, and the next year I didn't send one. The tissue crinkled between my fingers. I picked up. "Owen?" "Hey." A pause. I heard a door close behind him, then the distant murmur of a television. "Did I wake you?" "No. I was working." "At almost midnight?" "I'm a book conservator. My deadlines don't care what time it is." "Right." He let out a breath. "You still do that?" "I still do that." Another pause. I pressed the phone harder to my ear, listening to the small, familiar sounds around him. The same house, probably. The same old furnace that used to clank twice before starting. "Dad's selling," Owen said. I set the tissue down. "Selling what?" "The house." The words should have landed as a simple fact. Instead, I felt the room shift around them. I had not seen the pale blue house on the hill in thirteen years, but I could still picture the stair rail where I'd scratched my initials with a key, the kitchen window where Mom used to keep basil, the upstairs room that had once been mine. "When?" "Contracts are supposed to be signed on January second. He says they've got an offer. Laurel wants to move before the spring." "Do you want to move?" "I don't know. I'm a senior. I've got the school play and a couple of friends who'd miss me." His voice tightened. "I'm not calling to ask you to talk him out of it." "I didn't think you were." "Good." He sounded almost relieved. "I just wanted you to come before everything got boxed up." My eyes landed on the row of volumes I'd been restoring, each one waiting for a steady hand and patience. "Why?" "I found something." "What?" "Letters. In the attic. They're addressed to me, but they're from you." For a moment I couldn't hear anything but the pulse in my ears. "I wrote to you when you were little," I said. "I know." "I sent birthday cards, too." "I know that now." I closed my eyes. "Did you read them?" "Some of them. Not all. They're in a box with your name written on it." A box. My name. An old, small fact that had somehow waited in the attic longer than either of us had been alive as we knew ourselves now. "What did Dad say?" "Nothing yet. I haven't shown him." Owen dropped his voice. "I was going to ask if you'd come down. Just for a day. I don't want to do this over the phone." I looked at the tissue again. I had spent years keeping my work clean, my studio quiet, and my life far enough away from that house that it couldn't reach me. "What day?" "Tomorrow? If you can." I almost said no. I almost said the house was his and Dad's now, and whatever they found belonged to them. The words formed easily; I'd practiced them for a long time. Then Owen said, "I don't want the last time I see you to be a picture on a screen." My mouth went dry. "I'll come tomorrow," I said. "Really?" "Yes." "Okay." He sounded younger for a second. "I'll tell Dad you're coming." "Don't tell him why." "Wasn't planning to." We said goodbye. I kept the phone in my hand after the call ended. The book on my table had been printed in 1911. Its leather cover had cracked along the spine, but the pages were still there. I had learned to work patiently around damage. I had learned that careful repair didn't mean pretending the break had never happened. I wasn't sure my family deserved the same work. But before midnight, I put my tools away and started packing. ***** I drove north the next morning through low winter clouds, the highway narrowing as I left Alder Cove behind. I had lived there long enough to feel its streets under my feet, but the route to my father's town came back without effort. The exits, the old stone church, the stand of pines before the road curved toward the coast. I hadn't planned to stop anywhere. Still, I pulled into a gas station twenty miles from Bellwether and bought coffee I didn't want. The cashier wished me a happy New Year. I said it back, then stood by the car with the paper cup warming my hands. I'd left that house at eighteen with a duffel bag, two boxes of books, and my mother's recipe tin. I'd told myself I was leaving because I was ready for college, because I wanted space, because nobody could tell me what to do. Those things had been true. They had not been the whole truth. At the time, Dad had stood at the foot of the stairs while Laurel carried my mother's framed photographs toward the hall closet. She wanted to turn my old room into a nursery. Owen was five, but Laurel was pregnant again, and the house had started to feel too small for all of us. I had said the pictures belonged where Mom had put them. Laurel had said the pictures weren't the point. Dad had said I was making every ordinary change into a test of whether he loved Mom more than Laurel. I told him I wasn't asking for that. I was asking him not to pack up everything that reminded me of her. He looked tired. His wedding ring shone under the kitchen light. "Then stop making this impossible." "I'm not the one putting Mom's things in a closet." That was when he said, "If you hate living here so much, maybe you should go." He had been angry. I knew that even then. I had been angry, too. But he had not followed me upstairs. He had not asked me to stay. I left the next morning. I made it through one semester of community college before I transferred farther south. For years, I waited for my father to call and tell me to come home. When he didn't, I told myself that waiting was another way of being hurt. I drank the terrible coffee. Then I got back in the car. Bellwether Bay looked smaller than I remembered and more worn around the edges. The harbor was gray beneath the clouds. A line of fishing boats bobbed at their moorings, and the gulls circled low over the water. My father's house sat on a hill above the old town, white siding, dark shutters, a porch that sagged slightly at the left corner. I parked in the drive and sat with the engine running. The front door opened. Owen came down the steps wearing a flannel shirt beneath his winter coat. He was taller than I was now. He had Dad's dark hair and Laurel's steady, watchful eyes. I got out. He crossed the driveway quickly, then seemed to remember we hadn't hugged in years. He stopped a step away. "I'm glad you came," he said. "I'm glad you called." He looked past me at the car. "You drove up this morning?" "Yeah." "You could've stayed at the inn." "I can still stay at the inn." "Dad says the spare room is still yours." The word yours caught between us. I glanced toward the house. "Is it?" Owen's face changed. He didn't try to answer. I shut the car door. "Show me the box."