“She’s looking more like my brother.” I winked.
“Don’t say that. My mom is coming next month. She’s a little territorial and thinks your family got the name. We’ve got to give her the looks.”
“Harrumph. See? It wasn’t a good concession at all.” I sat at their breakfast table and bounced Carolina on my lap. “I need to talk to Jason. And to you.”
“This sounds serious.”
“It is.”
She gestured toward the front of the house. “To the window with you. Change her on your way and I’ll get us coffee and wake your brother.”
Gabriela and Jason’s home sat on the corner of Saint Botolph and Albemarle and featured the most amazing semicircular window well in the living room’s corner. Right when they moved in, she had a cushioned seat specially fabricated and filled it with pillows. She then designed and built a high semicircular table to fit into the niche to hold food, drinks, books . . . whatever was needed to make the corner one’s sanctuary. It was where we always talked, especially when life felt tough.
I grabbed a cloth from the kitchen, a fresh onesie from the small bin Gabriela kept in their pantry, and curled into a corner of the window well to wiggle Carolina into fresh clothing.
Within minutes Gabriela set three coffees on the table. Right as she turned toward the stairs, a soft chuckle reached us both.
“This looks cozy. Shall I leave you two?”
I flapped my hand. “I came mostly for you. Did we wake you?”
“Nah. I set an alarm. I find if I sleep more than nine hours after a shift I get groggy. Best to keep my circadian rhythm in sync.”
“Of course.” I chuckled. “Wouldn’t want your rhythm getting off.”
He scowled as only an older brother can and crossed the room to drop beside me. Rather than hug me, he tucked me tight under his arm and ruffled my hair, pulling it in every direction from my ponytail.
“Stop, you bully,” I whined.
“Bully? You ghosted me again.” Jason released me. “I have texted you for dinner almost every week since you got back. I don’t know which is worse—that my sister refuses to have a single dinner with me or that I keep asking.”
“You have a family. I don’t want to take your time.”
Jason gave me the evil eye, then relented as he always did. He looped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Well . . . it’s good to see you.” He then shifted his gaze to his daughter. It was so full of love and longing, I held Carolina out to him. No doctor gets enough time with their family.
“Did you know Aunt Caroline was a Nazi?”
“What?” Jason’s yelp startled his daughter and left no doubt in me. He knew nothing.
I briefly tried to remember what that Christmas had been like. Had he come home from college days after our return and no one said anything? Did we really act as if nothing had happened?
I answered the questions as quickly as they surfaced. Yes and yes. No one said anything about London because no one was saying anything at all. We’d all retreated to our metaphorical corners to heal after Amelia died. Except we never healed. And Jason, if I recalled correctly, decided to return to campus a week early that break.
I emerged from this trip down memory lane to find both Jason and Gabriela staring at me. “Sorry . . .”
With that, I dove in. I laid out Mat Hammond, his article, and everything as I knew it, beginning with our grandmother and great-aunt’s birth in 1918 and hitting upon that afternoon in 2002. I then handed my phone, with Mat’s article still displayed, to Jason, who leaned toward his wife to share the screen. After Carolina grabbed for it several times, I lifted her from his arms.
Jason laid the phone on the table. “What’d Dad say?”
“He refused to talk about it. He said he threatened to sue Mat, but it was just a bluff. He simply hoped he’d drop the story.”
“Dad? Wow. This must have really shaken him.”
“Your poor father.” Gabriela sighed. “To have all this churned up. He must feel so hurt, even threatened. And right as you’re trying—” Carolina distracted her with a fist to the eye. Grabbing her daughter’s hand, she finished with, “I’m just so sad for him.”
“You’re trying what?” I asked my brother.
Jason leaned back into the window. “I want him to get another opinion from Sloane Kettering in New York. There is so much he can do, but he’s taken the most minimal path at Mass General. Someone needs to knock some sense into him. It’s like the man wants to die.”
My chest tightened. “He won’t go?”
“Like you say, he refuses to talk about it.”
“But you two”—Gabriela cut between us—“don’t you understand better now? This is family. This has formed him.” She pressed her hand against her heart. “This betrayal pressed upon him his whole life. I understand you say you learned this twenty years ago, but we feel things even when we cannot name their cause. This has always been with him, hovering, wounding.”
“He said something like that last night.” I rubbed at my eyes.
Jason clamped a hand on my knee. “You didn’t cause this, kid.”
I looked up at him.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
With ten years between us, Jason and I agreed we grew up in different families. His memories were filled with baseball games, model trains, family dinners, and one-on-one excursions with Dad. I remembered little before Amelia’s death, making my childhood all the more somber, solitary, and shadowed—with me at fault for the change.
I liked hearing his stories, and loved imagining them to be mine. More than that, our personalities were as different as our stories. He, always direct and determined. Me, seemingly more scattered, unsure where to stand. I often wondered if looking at the same thing, we’d understand the other’s description. Our perspectives were night and day.
Yet despite all those differences, Jason always saw me. He tried to understand. And he was right about the invitations—every week for the past year, he’d invited me to dinner. Just the two of us. To talk. To connect. And I had shied away each and every time, certain I’d disappoint and let him down, certain if I accepted, he’d see through me and never call again.
I drew my legs beneath me. “First Amelia, then a few months later this . . . I can’t help but think that since 2002 I’ve been a constant reminder of the worst things that ever happened to Dad.”
Jason folded me into a hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around much. That was a rough year.”
Despite my best efforts, the tears started to fall. When I finally sat back, Jason did what Jason has always done for me. He handed me a Kleenex and began to problem solve. “Now that you know, what’s next? You need to help Dad.”
Part of me wanted to retort, “What do you think I’ve been trying to do every day this past year?” while the saner part didn’t want to share that nugget of my psyche.