PART 5 — THE QUESTION I FINALLY ASKED
I unfolded the paper while Brandon stood across from me.
There were only two words on the inside.
I would.
I read them again.
Then I set the paper beside the photograph because my hands had begun to shake.
“What were you going to ask her?” Brandon said.
“If she’d live here with me.”
He looked around the apartment as if I’d pointed to a house on the other side of the world.
“Over the bookstore?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell us?”
“I hadn’t even told your mother.”
I picked up the photograph again.
There I was on the sidewalk, hands in my pockets, looking up at the balcony.
I remembered that day.
June had put a sign in the bookstore window saying the upstairs apartment might be available in the fall.
I had gone in for a newspaper and come out trying to figure out whether our kitchen table would fit through the door.
That night I’d driven to the grocery store and sat in the parking lot rehearsing how I would ask Evelyn.
I’d made it sound like a sensible decision.
Fewer stairs than some of the other places we’d looked at.
A short walk to the market.
No yard to keep up.
Then, sitting alone in the car with a carton of milk going warm beside me, I’d tried saying what I actually meant.
Would you like to have a little place of our own again?
The next morning I poured her coffee and sat down.
The hospital called before I got past her name.
“How did she know?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t know.”
He looked at the photograph.
“You’re smiling.”
I was.
I hadn’t realized it until he said so.
Brandon pulled out the chair across from me.
“Did you want to leave because of us?”
“Sometimes I wanted to go for a walk with your mother without telling anybody when we’d be back.”
He sat down.
“I used to come over and ask if you could let the plumber in. Or pick up Noah. Or wait for a delivery.”
“I liked picking up Noah.”
“I know. That made it easy to ask you for the other things.”
For a while we sat without speaking.
Then he said, “You were going to ask Mom to move out months before I told you to take care of yourself.”
“I was.”
“Were you worried I’d think you were leaving me?”
“I was worried you’d be relieved.”
That was a hard thing to tell my son.
It was harder to watch him hear it.
He picked up the photograph by one corner and turned it so it faced me.
“I would’ve missed you,” he said.
I believed him.
I also knew he’d have called to ask where I kept the spare batteries before he thought to tell me.
Both things belonged to the son I loved.
I folded Evelyn’s answer along the crease she’d made.
Then I took him downstairs to ask June how long my wife had known.
THE APARTMENT SHE WAITED FOR
June was shelving books when we found her.
She looked at the photograph and smiled.
“I took that one,” she said.
“You did?”
“Evelyn was inside with me. She said you’d spent ten minutes pretending to read the newspaper while you looked at the balcony. She asked me to go out the side door and get a picture before you noticed.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“She said she wanted you to see your own face.”
June slid the last book into place.
“Then she asked me what the rent would be.”
I’d thought Evelyn had chosen the apartment because Melissa wanted me out of the guesthouse.
I’d imagined her in the hospital, trying to find somewhere I could go.
Now I could picture her in the bookstore months earlier, sitting on the stool by the mysteries, making plans for a life she expected to live.
“The couple upstairs renewed their lease,” June said.
“Your wife told me to call her if they changed their minds. They did, near the end of summer.”
“Why did she keep it a surprise?”
“She said you already had enough appointments on the calendar. She wanted you to have a Saturday.”
I looked down at the photograph.
“Did she tell you when she wanted to move in?”
“She told me what she wanted to do the first morning.”
June led me toward the front window, where I could see both balcony chairs reflected in the glass.
“She said you’d go down for a newspaper, come back up, and read it aloud until she asked you to stop.”
I laughed.
Evelyn used to give me one article before she asked for the crossword.
Sometimes I picked a long one on purpose.
Brandon had been standing a little behind us.
He said, “Dad, what are you going to do when the lease runs out?”
“I’ll ask June if I can stay.”
June took her glasses off.
“You just did.”
THE CALL THAT CAME ON TUESDAY
On Tuesday morning, Margaret called to tell me the bank wanted to speak to me directly.
I’d known the call would come.
I still had to sit down before she put me through.
The bank investigator asked whether I could identify the signature on the letter.
“I can identify where it came from,” I said.
He asked me to explain.
So I told a stranger about my seventy-first birthday.
I told him my wife had hidden a card under my pillow and drawn a little heart at the bottom.
I told him she’d never signed the letter his bank had received.
Then he asked if I could send him a photograph of the whole card.
I said I would.
After we hung up, I stood at the kitchen counter trying to get the page flat enough to photograph.
The fold kept lifting.
Finally I set Evelyn’s yellow mug on one corner.
The picture came out clear.
I sent it to Margaret and put the card away.
Brandon called that evening.
“The investigator wants me to come in,” he said.
“Have you spoken to an attorney?”
“Yes. Margaret gave me a name. I’m paying him myself.”
I could hear him opening and closing something.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Packing lunch.”
He was starting at the building supply store the next morning.
He’d bought a lunch box that was too small for the container Melissa had filled, and he was trying to get the lid shut.
I told him to turn the container sideways.
There was a click.
“That worked,” he said.
Then neither of us hung up.
Finally he asked, “Did you tell the bank everything?”
“I did.”
He let out a breath.
“Okay.”
I waited for him to ask what exactly I’d said, or whether I could call back and explain what kind of person he was when he wasn’t desperate.
Instead he said, “I’m going to set my alarms.”
The bank closed the application without lending him a dollar.
The investigator referred the false documents for review, and Brandon spent months answering questions with his own attorney beside him.
He eventually entered a diversion agreement that required community service and repayment of the bank’s documented costs.
I learned that from Brandon himself.
He told me one evening while we were eating soup, then got up to bring his bowl to the sink.
“Did you want me to say something?” I asked.
He rinsed the spoon and set it beside the bowl.
“I wanted you to hear it from me this time.”
THE LAST NIGHT IN SIX BEDROOMS
At the end of November, Brandon and Melissa moved out of the big house.
They’d spent weeks selling the staging inventory and collecting what customers still owed them.
Graham took the proceeds they agreed on, and the remaining debt went into a payment plan they had to manage on their new incomes.
Carol’s money was written down separately.
Melissa made the first payment to her the Friday she got paid for a staging job she’d done using rented furniture.
It was two hundred dollars.
Carol counted it at the kitchen counter.
Melissa asked if she had to do that in front of her.
“Yes,” Carol said.
Then she made her daughter a cup of tea.
On moving day I went over to get the last box from the guest apartment.
When I came out, Brandon was standing on a stepladder in the main house, taking down the clock I’d seen him put batteries into the morning I left.
He held it out to me.
“Can you grab this?”
I took it while he climbed down.
Then we walked through the house to check for anything the movers had missed.
In the upstairs hall, just inside the linen closet, there were pencil marks where Evelyn had measured the children.
Sophie’s went all the way back to the year she could barely stand still long enough to be measured.
Noah had drawn a bird beside the mark for his ninth birthday.
Brandon ran his finger over the little drawing.
“Should we paint over these?” he asked.
“Let’s take a picture first.”
He got his phone.
The marks were too faint to show up with the hall light on, so he asked me to hold the closet door while he tried from a different angle.
For ten minutes that was all we did.
Afterward he sent the pictures to both children.
Noah replied first.
That’s a falcon.
I had always thought it was a duck.
I kept that to myself.
Downstairs, Brandon set the keys on the kitchen counter.
Then he asked if we could walk through the guest apartment together.
It was empty except for the flattened boxes Melissa had brought me two days after the funeral.
I’d slid them behind the refrigerator after all.
Brandon took them out.
One still had a strip of tape stuck to the bottom.
He ran his thumb over it.
“I thought if I stopped the money first, you’d have to agree to whatever we worked out,” he said.
I stood in the doorway where Melissa had told me I was welcome through the end of the month.
“What did you think I’d do if you made me leave?” I asked.
“I figured you’d call me when you needed something.”
He pulled the tape free.
“I never pictured you calling anybody else.”
I thought of Margaret telling me to eat half a sandwich.
June standing at my door with a paper bag.
Sophie folding her grandmother’s cardigan so I could close the suitcase.
“I had people, Brandon.”
“I know that now.”
I looked at him.
“You were supposed to be one of them.”
He held the flattened boxes against his chest.
For a moment I thought he might try to tell me he still was.
Then he said, “I’d like to be, if you ever need me.”
I took half the boxes from him, and we carried them out together.
The company sold the house the following spring to a family with three children and a grandmother who came to the second viewing to see whether her sewing machine would fit in the guest apartment.
I answered her questions myself.
She wanted to know if the path was lit at night.
I told her my granddaughter knew how to change the bulbs.
THE FIRST THING NOAH PUT IN HIS ROOM
At Linden, Noah claimed a spot for the basketball hoop before he’d unpacked a single shirt.
His bird book went on the windowsill, where he could open it without moving the lamp.
Sophie put her desk beside the window in the little room off the kitchen.
She turned it sideways so it cleared the heater.
Then she taped Evelyn’s photograph above it with the drawing still visible along the bottom.
“You could frame that,” I said.
“I will when I decide whether to put something next to it.”
In November, I took her on the college visit we’d talked about.
In the art building, she asked the guide about a room where students were working with clay.
I asked if they got to use it on weekends.
Sophie gave me a look.
Then the guide said yes, and Sophie wrote it down.
On the drive home she told me she might want to study industrial design.
I asked what that was.
She spent twenty minutes telling me about chairs.
Somewhere along the highway, I realized it was the first time since Evelyn died that I’d gone a whole afternoon without looking at my phone to see how long I’d managed.
When I dropped Sophie off, the porch light was on.
I walked her to the door and started to fish for my keys.
Then I remembered I’d given Brandon and Melissa both copies when they signed the lease.
I knocked.
Noah opened it with the bird book under one arm.
“Are you staying for dinner?”
“Did your parents invite me?”
He looked over his shoulder.
“Mom, did you invite Grandpa?”
Melissa came down the hall wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“I was about to.”
She stopped at the doorway.
“Would you like to stay, Robert?”
I could smell onions cooking behind her.
I’d planned to go home, heat some soup, and finish the crossword June had left on the stairs.
I wanted to do those things.
So I said, “How about next Sunday?”
“All right,” she said.
“Is six too late?”
“Six is fine.”
I drove home and ate my soup.
The next Sunday I went back at six.
THE FIRST PEACH
By June, I’d signed another lease on the apartment above the bookstore.
I bought a narrow table that fit through the door with half an inch to spare.
I started doing the crossword downstairs with June on Fridays.
She did it in pen.
I brought a pencil and learned to keep my guesses to myself until I was sure.
One Saturday morning, Brandon knocked.
He was holding a small paper bag from the market.
“I saw these and thought of Mom,” he said.
Inside were two peaches.
They were hard enough to knock together.
“Too early?” he asked.
“By about a week.”
“I can take them back.”
“Leave them on the windowsill.”
He set the bag down.
Then he took out his phone and showed me a photograph of Carol’s latest repayment receipt.
“She asked us to stop rounding the balance,” he said.
“Says if she’s going to wait for every dollar, we can count every dollar.”
“That sounds like Carol.”
He put his phone away.
“Dad, can I ask you something about the money I sent you?”
I waited.
“Did you ever spend any of it on yourself?”
“Once,” I said.
“Your mother and I went to lunch on our anniversary. She wanted to pay with the money you’d sent that morning.”
“What did you get?”
“Fish. She had pie for lunch.”
He smiled.
“She always said she’d do that one day.”
“She did. She made me order coffee so she could steal it.”
He looked down at the table.
“Did she know I’d tell you to take care of yourself?”
“No.”
“Do you think she would’ve been ashamed of me?”
I took my time answering.
Evelyn had loved our son enough to give him a chance to tell the truth while she was dying.
I couldn’t imagine her pretending it hadn’t mattered when he chose to hurt me instead.
“She would have been angry,” I said.
“She would have wanted to know what you did the next morning.”
Brandon looked out toward the balcony.
“What did you do the next morning, Dad?”
“June brought me a scone. I ate half of it. Then Sophie called about college.”
He nodded slowly.
“I meant after the funeral,” he said.
I thought about it.
“I got up and made coffee for two people,” I said.
“I didn’t realize until I put both mugs on the table.”
His eyes went to Evelyn’s yellow mug on the shelf.
He walked over and took down the plain white one beside it.
“Would you like some now?”
“Yes,” I said.
While he filled the kettle, I opened the blue recipe tin and took out Evelyn’s answer.
I brought it to the balcony with me and sat in the chair by the railing.
Below, June was setting out the bargain books.
A man on the sidewalk was waiting for his wife to come out of the shop.
Every few seconds he looked through the window to see if she was ready.
I knew exactly how long he might be standing there.
Behind me, Brandon stopped in the open doorway with my coffee in his hand.
“Is it all right if I sit?” he asked.
I looked at the other chair.
For months I’d turned it toward the street because that was how Evelyn and I would have used it.
I reached over and turned it a little toward mine.
“Sit awhile,” I said.
He sat.
We watched the man downstairs take his wife’s books so she could button her coat.
Brandon handed me my coffee.
He’d cooled it with a little water.
This time I told him I liked it that way.
THE END
