Chapter 3
Megan put tea in front of her.
“Summer or winter?” Megan asked.
“Autumn.”
“How do you know?”
“I had just brought the geraniums inside.”
We moved to the sunroom.
The geraniums were gone now.
The wicker chair wasn’t.
Mom sat in it and closed her eyes.
“Your father came through that door.”
She pointed toward the garden entrance.
“He never came through the garden,” I said.
“That day he did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was he wearing?”
Mom smiled faintly.
“His awful brown coat.”
I remembered it.
My father owned thirty suits and one coat he refused to throw away despite my mother’s hatred of it.
“What did he say?”
Mom’s brow furrowed.
“He said…”
We waited.
Then she opened her eyes.
“He said, ‘Cat, I need you to keep this somewhere Isaac won’t look.’”
Every muscle in my body went still.
Megan glanced toward me.
“Why wouldn’t he want Isaac to find it?” she asked.
Mom shook her head.
“He didn’t say.”
“Were they arguing?” Megan asked.
“No.”
“Was he scared?”
My mother considered.
“No.”
Then something changed in her face.
“He was ashamed.”
That word landed harder than fear would have.
My father had been many things.
Ashamed was rarely one of them.
“Then what?” I asked.
“I told him I didn’t keep secrets from my son.”
“That sounds like you.”
“He said it wasn’t a secret from you. Not forever.”
I stood near the window.
“What did you do with it?”
Mom closed her eyes again.
“I took it.”
“Where?”
“I remember walking upstairs.”
We followed.
Slowly.
No rushing.
No grabbing.
Megan stayed near Mom’s left side without touching her.
I stayed on the right.
For once, I didn’t reach out every time she wavered.
It required more discipline than I wanted to admit.
At the second-floor hallway, Mom stopped.
“My sewing room.”
We entered.
The room had not been used much in years.
Mom once spent hours there making curtains, repairing shirts, and creating Christmas stockings no one had requested.
She touched the old cutting table.
“I put it down here.”
“Then?”
Her face clouded.
“I don’t know.”
We searched every cabinet.
Nothing.
I removed drawers.
Checked behind shelves.
Looked beneath the floorboards where one corner had loosened.
Nothing.
After an hour, Mom was exhausted.
Megan noticed before I did.
“That’s enough,” she said.
“We’re close.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Another ten minutes.”
“No.”
I looked at her.
She looked back.
Mom sighed.
“Children.”
Neither of us spoke.
“I’m taking a nap,” she announced.
Megan helped her back toward the hallway.
At the door, Mom looked over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Isaac.”
“For what?”
“I wish I remembered.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
It did.
She knew it did.
But she smiled anyway.
After Megan took her upstairs, I stayed in the sewing room.
I searched everything again.
Then I saw the old Singer machine beneath the window.
My mother hadn’t used it in years.
I opened its side compartment.
Thread.
Needles.
Buttons.
Nothing.
I swore quietly.
“You know that usually scares objects into revealing themselves.”
Megan stood behind me.
“Do you always sneak up on people?”
“I walked normally.”
“Try stomping.”
“I’ll make a note.”
She came closer to the sewing table.
“You’re angry.”
“I’m efficient.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
I turned.
“Why do you care?”
“About the box?”
“About any of this.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“Because your mother matters to me.”
“You’ve known her four months.”
“Time isn’t the only measurement.”
I studied her face.
Again, there was something she wasn’t saying.
“You said you did this with your grandmother.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Megan looked toward the window.
“She had dementia.”
The sharpness in my chest softened slightly.
“She raised me.”
“What about your parents?”
“My mother died when I was fifteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
Megan gave a small nod.
“My father wasn’t around much. Grandma was home.”
She ran a finger along the edge of the sewing table.
“When she started forgetting things, everybody focused on what she couldn’t remember. Names. Dates. Appointments. I did too.”
Her voice became quieter.
“Then one day she forgot who I was.”
I said nothing.
“I cried in the bathroom for an hour. The next morning I went back, and she still didn’t know my name. But she reached for my hand.”
Megan swallowed.
“That’s when I realized memory isn’t the only place people keep love.”
I had no response to that.
Men like me were supposed to always have responses.
Megan looked embarrassed by her own honesty.
“So,” she said, “I learned to stop testing her. I stopped asking, ‘Do you remember?’ I started asking, ‘Does this feel familiar?’”
I looked around the room again.
“Does this feel familiar,” I repeated.
“Exactly.”
Then I saw something.
Not the sewing machine.
The wall.
“What?”
I crossed the room.
A framed sampler hung beside the door.
My mother embroidered it when I was a child.
A house.
A tree.
Our names.
ROBERT, CATHERINE, ISAAC.
I lifted it down.
Behind it was nothing but wallpaper.
Megan frowned.
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.”
Then I noticed the frame was unusually thick.
I turned it over.
The cardboard backing had been replaced at some point.
My fingers found a narrow seam.
Megan stopped breathing beside me.
I pulled the backing free.
Inside was an envelope.
Not a box.
An envelope.
Yellowed.
Sealed.
My name was written across the front.
ISAAC.
My father’s handwriting.
For several seconds, I couldn’t move.
Megan stepped back.
“I’ll give you privacy.”
“No.”
She stopped.
I didn’t know why I said it.
Maybe because the room suddenly felt too small.
Maybe because twelve years of dealing with my father’s legacy had made me tired of opening his doors alone.
I broke the seal.
Inside were four pieces of paper.
A photograph fell first.
It landed face up on the table.
My father.
Younger.
Maybe thirty.
Beside him stood another man I recognized after a moment.
Thomas Vale.
My father’s oldest business partner.
Thomas had disappeared from our lives when I was seventeen.
My father told me they had disagreed over money.
I hadn’t heard his name in years.
The photograph showed them standing in front of a small brick building.
On the back, my father had written:
Harbor House, 1988.
Megan leaned slightly closer.
“What is Harbor House?”
“I don’t know.”
The first sheet was a letter.
Isaac,
If you are reading this, then I either ran out of courage or ran out of time.
Neither possibility makes me proud.
There are things you believe about the Mercer name because I allowed you to believe them. Some were lies. Some were omissions. Most were choices I made because I thought protecting you meant deciding what truths you could carry.
I was wrong.
I read the sentence twice.
May you like
My hands felt cold.
The next paragraph was worse.
