My father's house smelled the same.
That was the thing that got me, walking through the front door at half past eleven at night with my one bag and three years of distance that turned out to be no distance at all the moment I stepped inside. Cedar and old paper and the specific warmth of a house that had been lived in by the same person for thirty years. The smell of him.
I stood in the hallway for a moment with my hand still on the door.
Then I put my bag down and went to the kitchen and filled the kettle because I needed something to do with my hands and because my father had believed, with the quiet conviction of a man who didn't make grand statements about anything, that most things were more manageable with tea.
I was going to test that theory.
The kettle was still heating when I
