Chapter 8: The Farmhouse in November
We left on a Friday morning before sunrise.
Emily sat in the back seat with her backpack and three library books she had selected the night before with great seriousness.
My father sat in the passenger seat with a travel blanket across his knees and a thermos of tea wedged between his hip and the door.
I had packed the car the night before, including a camera, a notepad, and the letter from the law firm in a folder in my bag.
The drive was long and quiet in the best way.
We stopped twice.
Emily taught me four more hand signs during the second stretch — one for hungry, one for stop, one that meant tell me more, and one she said Daddy had invented specifically for long car rides, which apparently meant I am still here, I am just looking out the window.
My father slept for two hours in the afternoon, deeply and without snoring, which I took as a good sign for the travel.
We reached the town near the farmhouse just after six in the evening.
The local couple Daniel had arranged as caretakers, a husband and wife named Tom and Linda Greer, had prepared the farmhouse for our arrival — heat on, water running, basic supplies in the kitchen.
Linda had left a note on the counter saying they were available whenever we needed them and to call if anything required attention.
The house was cold in the way old houses are when they've been closed up — a cold that lives in the walls, not just the air.
But it was clean.
The floors were swept.
Someone had put a small arrangement of dried flowers on the kitchen table.
Emily stood in the entry hall and turned in a slow circle, looking up at the ceiling, the staircase, the doorways.
"Was this Daddy's house?" she asked.
"When he was young," I said.
"He grew up here."
She turned to look at me.
"Did he like it?"
"He loved it," I said.
"He always talked about coming back here someday and fixing it up properly."
Emily looked around the entry hall again with new attention, as if she was reassessing everything through that information.
"Then we should fix it up," she said simply.
And went to find the kitchen.
My father stood in the doorway of the sitting room for a long moment, his hand on the frame, looking at the furniture covered in white sheets, the fireplace, the window that looked out over the dark yard.
I didn't interrupt him.
We had a simple dinner from what Linda had left for us.
Emily went to bed early without protest.
I helped my father get settled in the downstairs bedroom we had prepared for him, the one with the bathroom directly adjacent.
Before I turned off his light, he looked up at me from the bed.
"The east room," he said.
"Tomorrow," I said.
"We'll go together tomorrow."
"Good." He paused.
"I'm glad I came."
"I'm glad you're here."
He made a hand sign slowly, his stiff fingers careful with it.
I recognized it.
Emily had taught it to me in the car.
*I am still here.
I am just looking out the window.*
I made it back to him.
Then I turned off the light.
The east room was at the end of the upstairs hallway, directly above the sitting room.
I had passed it twice already, bringing bags upstairs, but I had not gone in.
I had felt the threshold of it in a way that had nothing to do with superstition and everything to do with the fact that this was where my husband had stood on a summer afternoon and chosen to leave something behind.
I went up alone at nine o'clock, before I was entirely ready, because waiting had stopped feeling useful.
The room was small and smelled of dust and dry wood.
A single window on the east wall looked out over the field behind the house.
In the darkness all I could see was my own reflection and the outline of the room behind me.
I turned on the light.
A wooden chair in the corner.
An old rug.
The window, with its frame and sill and the low baseboard running beneath it.
I crossed the room and knelt down at the baseboard under the window.
Ran my hands along the lower edge of the wood.
Third board from the left.
It moved under my palm, slightly loose, exactly as he had written.
I worked the edge of it free.
Behind it, in the small dark space between the baseboard and the wall, was a tin box.
Plain.
No markings on it.
I pulled it out.
Sat back on my heels.
Opened it.
Inside was a photograph — not a printed one, but an older developed photograph, the kind with the white border.
A woman I did not recognize stood in front of this house, in what looked like summer, squinting into the sun.
On the back of the photograph, in handwriting I did not recognize, someone had written: *Ruth, July 2008.*
My chest tightened.
Beneath the photograph was a folded document.
A letter on personal stationery.
And beneath that, a smaller envelope with a typed label — not addressed to me.
Addressed to the law firm in town.
The same law firm that Ruth Calloway's claim had been filed through.
My hands went very still.
The envelope had already been opened.
The letter inside it, when I unfolded it, was dated the summer Daniel had visited — the summer before we knew.
It was written in Daniel's handwriting.
May you like
The first line read:
*Ruth, I am writing this to put in terms we can both rely on what I told you in person — which is that I cannot give you something I do not have the right to give.*
