“You gave me the picture?” Allison asked.
“I guess you really don’t remember anything from that time,” he said. “You were in the hospital and I wanted to go talk to you. Dad had told us you were going home with your aunt when you got discharged so I knew it was probably my last chance to clear the air with you. I waited until after dark and I snuck in to see you.”
Allison looked at him, stunned.
“You were asleep,” he said. “So not a big surprise you don’t remember that. But I talked to you for a long time, anyway. Probably my first confession.”
“What did you confess?”
“I said...” Roland paused. His eyes darkened. “I said I was sorry about what happened between us. I said I wished I’d been at home so I could have helped you when you fell. I said I hoped you’d get to come home to us soon. But if you didn’t, I wanted you to have this picture of us until you could come home again.”
Allison blinked and hot tears fell.
“I wondered where this picture came from,” she said. “I thought your dad put it in my suitcase.”
“I wanted you to remember us,” Roland said. “I should have given you the whole picture but I wanted to remember you, too. Monks don’t carry wallets but I had that picture of you in my prayer book until I left.” He paused and seemed to be deciding if he should say what he said next. “I prayed for you.”
“You did? What did you pray?” she asked, deeply touched. Had anyone else ever prayed for her?
“Nothing big. That you were happy. That you were okay. That you’d come home someday,” he said. “And here you are.”
She touched the photograph where the torn seams met. Seeing the two halves of the picture together again made the old wound in her heart, the one left when she was taken away, ache a little, but the good kind of aching, the kind of aching that meant the wound was healing.
“I’ll stay the night,” she said, smiling through her tears.
“You will?”
“Why not?” she said with a resigned sigh. “One night won’t kill me.”
Chapter 8
Roland insisted on going out to her rental car to bring in her luggage. While he was gone she wandered around the downstairs. The house was neither grand nor intimidating but the signs were everywhere that Dr. Capello had money and lots of it. She’d learned how to spot money from McQueen. His house was beautiful and big but minus obvious ostentation. The really rich people, McQueen had said, are rich enough they don’t have to prove anything. A millionaire will keep a wad of cash in a gold-plated money clip in his Armani suit pocket. A billionaire will show up in jeans with a couple twenties in his faded leather wallet. Now Dr. Capello, she knew, certainly wasn’t a billionaire, but he had enough money he didn’t have to prove anything to anyone. Yet the signs were there. The paintings on the walls weren’t prints but originals with familiar-sounding names inscribed in the bottom right corners—Rex Whistler, Grant Wood, even one O’Keeffe. The furniture was heavy, handcrafted and hand-carved. Nothing from IKEA here. As a child, she hadn’t had the eyes to appreciate the decorative woodwork, the antique mantel clocks, the stained glass transom windows, but her well-trained adult eyes saw it all. She was amazed that a man with Dr. Capello’s wealth had become a doctor when he could easily have lived off his inheritance. Even more amazing that instead of getting married and having biological children, he’d adopted kids out of foster care. McQueen would never have taken in a needy kid. Not unless she was over eighteen and he was sleeping with her.
Roland returned with her suitcase in his right hand and her overnight bag on his left shoulder.
“You okay going upstairs?” he asked.
“I’m fine, I promise,” she said as he led the way. The house was three stories high, and when she’d lived there, all the kids slept on the second floor. Dr. Capello’s office and bedroom took up the entire third floor. They started up the stairs, and Allison clung to the carved banister railing as she followed Roland up.
“I hope Dr. Capello doesn’t have to climb these stairs as sick as he is,” she said.
“He’s been doing it,” Roland said with a touch of awe mingled with annoyance. “Insisting on it. I don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to keep that up. We’ll probably put a bed in the sunroom when he can’t make it to the third floor anymore.”
“It’s been slowly progressing?” she asked when they reached the landing.
“Very slow until recently. Dialysis isn’t working anymore. He’s had too many infections to qualify for a transplant. Last week he threw in the towel. They say kidney failure is one of the most peaceful ways to go. Small blessing. Very small.” He pointed down the hall. “This way.”
The second floor had been the kids’ kingdom during her time here. In her last months here, six kids had divided up four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The girls—Thora, Kendra and Allison—slept on the east side of the house, which Dr. Capello called the sunrise side, and the boys—Roland, Deacon and Oliver—slept on the west side, the sunset side. The boys got the ocean view but the girls got the bigger rooms. A fair trade, Allison remembered thinking.
“Where am I sleeping?” she asked. The second floor looked markedly different than she remembered, which made sense. The kids weren’t kids anymore. No reason for Technicolor paint jobs and skateboards in the hallway, Batman movie posters and swimsuits and towels hanging over the shower rod to dry.
“Over here,” he said, leading her to the corner sunset-side bedroom.
“This is your old room,” she said.
“Yeah, now it’s the guest room.”
“Where do you sleep?” she asked as Roland opened the door and turned on the light.
“For the past couple of weeks, on a chair in Dad’s room.”
Allison walked in and put her bag down on the bed. The room was in a corner of the house with two windows—one facing north to the sparse woods and the other west to the ocean. The ocean-view window was half open to let in the sea breeze, and she was pleased to see a window bench had been added with white cushions and navy blue pillows; a pair of binoculars for bird-watching hung on a hook. She could see herself sitting in that cozy spot and reading all day.
Roland’s old wooden slat bed was gone, replaced with a full-size brass bed with a cream-colored quilt and sea-blue sheets and pillows, a dark blue rug and framed Ansel Adams landscapes on the walls. It was lovely, if a bit generic, like a bed-and-breakfast’s best room.
“Very nice,” she said, hiding her disappointment that so much had changed.
“Thora’s been taking care of the house,” Roland said. “She handled the remodel up here about five years ago. Dents in the walls, scuffs on the floor. There was even barbecue sauce on the ceiling on Deacon’s side of the room.”
“Wait, barbecue sauce?”
“I mean, we hope that’s what it was,” Roland said. “We didn’t ask.”
“I can’t believe this was your room,” she said, sitting on the bed. “It doesn’t smell like feet.”
“That was Deacon’s fault,” Roland said.
“Liar. I remember your running sneakers. Dr. Capello threatened to call in the hazmat team to decontaminate your closet.”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“You keep calling him ‘Dr. Capello.’ He was your dad.”
“He was my dad,” Allison said. “And you were my brother. You still feel like my brother?”
Roland stood in the doorway, not quite out, not quite in. Even as a boy, he’d had a habit of blocking doorways, filling the frames, reaching up and holding on to the top of the molding to stretch his arms and back.
“I don’t know what I feel,” he said.
“He never did officially adopt me like he did with you and Deacon and Thora,” she went on. “I was just a foster kid he took in.”
“You weren’t just anything. He loved you.”
“I know he did. And he was wonderful to me. That’s why I’m here. I owe him at least this much. A lot more probably.”