I thought for a moment, remembering how I’d been after my mother’s death, trying to be the best student, the best daughter, the best housekeeper so that my father wouldn’t notice my mother’s absence so much. And it had worked for a long time, too. Until he’d met Loralee.
“But you probably already know that.” He reached up into the closet to pull down whatever it was he’d seen, allowing me to stare. He was so different from Cal, and I wondered why I’d thought I’d seen my dead husband when Gibbes had appeared at my doorstep the day before. They had the same sandy-colored hair and deep-set eyes of golden brown, and they both walked with the same confidence. But whereas Cal had been built like a football player, broad and strong, Gibbes was taller and leaner. So much alike, yet so different. I recalled Mr. Williams saying how Gibbes favored their mother and Cal their father. It made me wonder whether other things besides physical traits could be inherited, too.
I hovered in the doorway, eager to get away yet not wanting him to get the last word. “You don’t know anything about me.”
He didn’t even glance at me. “I know enough,” he said dismissively.
I bit my lip and breathed deeply, mentally reciting what Cal told me was the first thing they learned at the academy: The triangle represents the three components that fires need to exist: heat, oxygen, and fuel. If one of these components is missing, a fire can’t ignite.
“Are you all right?”
I was embarrassed to realize I’d closed my eyes, as if I could hide inside myself and not be noticed. Another habit I’d picked up during my marriage. “I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“I said I’m fine. I really just want to get this over with.”
“Is it the New Englander in you that makes you so stubborn, or is that just you?”
Too angry to respond, I headed toward Owen’s room and had reached the threshold when a crash came from the room behind me. I raced back to see the unmarked box from the closet shelf lying on the wood floor on its side, its top flaps opened like lips, regurgitating a stack of yellowed newspapers.
Gibbes squatted in front of the box and righted it. “It was heavier than I thought. Doesn’t look like anything broke.”
Curious, I stepped forward. “It’s just newspapers?”
He nodded. “Yeah—and they’re not mine. It’s the only box I didn’t recognize, which is why I tried to pull it down from the shelf.”
He began picking up the scattered newspapers and restacking. I leaned down and scooped up one that had slid nearly to the door. Glancing down, I read the date on the front page. July 26, 1955.
“This one’s pretty old,” I said, handing it to him and watching as he added it to the stack.
“They’re all pretty old,” he said as he stood, flipping through the pile. “They all seem to be from the same year.” He pulled out one from the bottom. “From July and August.” He shrugged. “Must be somebody’s graduation or wedding or something my grandmother wanted to put in a scrapbook and never got around to.” Leaning over the box, he dumped the newspapers inside, then bent over to fold the lid flaps before hoisting it into his arms.
“If it’s all right with you and Loralee, I think I’ll just stick this in the corner of the room along with anything else we find that can be thrown out. That way they won’t be confused with the boxes of stuff I want to keep that I’ll be stacking in the hallway.”
“Fine with me. And Loralee won’t mind—she’s only here for the week.”
He shot me a look that made me want to close my eyes again. “You seem pretty sure of that.”
“Of course. She told me they’re just here for a visit, and I’m sure she’s eager to find a new home for her and Owen.”
He studied me for a moment before walking to the corner of the room and dumping the box on the floor.
“You don’t look anything like him, you know. Except for the eyes. And the color of your hair.” I bit my lip, but it was too late to call the words back. As a child I’d always spoken before I thought, something my mother had tried to curb but my father had found amusing. Cal was the one who’d finally made me stop. Until now.
“So I’ve been told. I hadn’t seen him since I was ten, but everybody always said that he looked like our daddy, although we both had our mother’s eyes. Which always made me happy, since I didn’t remember her eyes at all.”
He couldn’t completely hide the hurt in his voice and looked away.
“What happened to your leg?”
My hand immediately went to my skirt, where I tugged on the hem as if I could make it longer, which was pointless, since he’d already seen the scar.
“I was in an accident when I was a little girl.”
If I’d hoped that would stop his questions, I was wrong.
“An accident?”
“A car accident.”