“Sure he did.”
“I guess I always thought he was a little more…” She pauses, fingering the fibers and texture. “I don’t know. Classic.”
“Guess it’d be hard to say, sitting two states away.”
A whole damn lot she didn’t know about her brother, no matter how well she thought she understood him. Especially not in death, when it came to what he would’ve wanted from her with his family. I think of the past year, all that’s happened between Laurel and me, of how our only communication for a while consisted of angry phone calls and lawyerish e-mails. And then just silence, Laurel always trying to reach me, while I just spun farther and farther away.
Without a word, Laurel rises to her feet and continues meandering through the house, down the back hallway, until she notices our family portrait—that same one Rebecca admired on our first date. “Oh, my.” She stops, studying it appreciatively with a kind of awed hush as she clasps her hands over her heart. “Oh, look at all of you.”
I pace beside her, unable to stand still. Unable to tolerate the dishonest reverence she’s displaying toward her brother and the family we fought so hard to weld together.
“Yeah, it’s a good picture,” I mumble as I move on toward the guest room, and after a moment, I hear her Birkenstocks clopping behind me on the hardwoods. “This is the guest room.” I shove the door open gruffly with the palm of my hand. “Bathroom’s connected. You know the drill.”
“Yes, I have stayed here before, Michael,” she reminds me, her clear eyes bright and teasing, but I ignore her attempt at familiar warmth. I follow her in, then hoist the suitcase onto the queen-sized bed. She enters the room cautiously, tiptoeing toward the open closet where Alex’s old suits now hang. I’ve stockpiled a lot of his stuff in here—suits and dress slacks and the like, much of it preserved in plastic dry-cleaning bags. His winter sweaters are in the dresser, the cashmere and hand-knit stuff he loved when it got cold enough.
“You kept all this?” she asks in a choked voice, folding her arms over her chest with a protective shiver.
“Couldn’t get rid of it,” I explain with an offhand shrug. “Couldn’t figure out what to do, exactly, so yeah, it’s here for now. The stuff I don’t wear.”
She trails her fingertips over all his suits that aren’t sealed off, sifting through each sleeve and bit of material with quiet reverence. Until she discovers his long suede jacket, that caramel-colored duster he wore from college until he died—the one he refused to give up despite juice stains from Andrea’s babyhood and ink stains from his office. She presses it longingly to her face, inhaling, a lost child burying her face in a beloved blanket. I’m startled when a quiet sound escapes from her throat, a slight moan of grief, and even with all the fury I’ve felt toward her, tears still burn my eyes.
“Oh!” she cries out in an anguished voice, stroking her hands over the familiar worn suede. “It’s so stupid, Michael, but I thought maybe, somehow, it would still smell like him.”
God, don’t I know that feeling? Just like me in his surfboard room, or slouching in his T-shirts, it’s no different at all.
“It’s been too long for that, Laurel,” I answer, gruffer than I intend to be. “He’s been gone more than a year.” I won’t tell her that sometimes I do still catch his scent now and then, like a gift right from God in heaven.
She glances at me over her shoulder, a melancholy expression on her face. “All this time, I kept thinking there was someplace he’d been hiding.”
“Thought maybe it was here?”
“I know that’s ridiculous.”
“Well, I always think he’s still over at the hospital working,” I concede gently. “Keep thinking I just gotta go see him, that’s all. Spooks me a little every time I drive near the place.”
She turns to face me, running her fingers down the shiny length of her black hair, smoothing it. “How have you possibly done this, Michael?” she asks, searching my face. “How have you managed?”
I shrug. “You do what you gotta do.”
She smiles, a beatific, forgiving expression that mirrors one I often see on her mother’s face. “You’ve done an excellent job, Michael,” she affirms, and I know what’s coming next—some kind of commentary on Andrea and my single parenting skills—so I cut her off at the pass.
“Look, I’m gonna go make some coffee, okay?” I turn my back on her, walking toward the doorway, fast. “Make yourself at home—”
“I want to make peace with you, Michael.” Her voice is electric-quiet, shocking me sure as if I’d reached out my hand and touched her. “That’s what I want. It’s why I’m here.”
“It’s pretty late for that, Laurel.”