Season of Gifts (Neighborly Affection #8)

75. Henry

Chapter seventy-five

Henry

I n the seven years since Father had passed, his study changed not one whit. Locked in the past, kept pristine by Mother’s regular cleaning service, the room waited for an occupant who would not return.

Henry ticked the door shut behind him, trailing Robert into the space. The baleful moose and its flanking deer mounts prickled his shoulders even now. But he required a quiet space to discuss what to do about Mother’s health, and this was the most suitable.

They appeared as mismatched bookends, he in his green robe and Robert in the blue, the colors that had been theirs since childhood. Christmas morning was nearly over; soon they would trade pajamas for proper clothes. He would retire to the kitchen to finish preparations for Christmas dinner, the traditional afternoon feast—with a few additions for his new spouses.

Robert strode to the window and stared out at the front yard. Jay led the boys in a snowball battle amid the ancient oaks, maples, and evergreens. The shoveling would be completed eventually if it hadn’t been already; of that Henry had no doubt. But the joys of being an uncle were what drew Jay year after year to a place that would never match the love and devotion he poured out. That Robert’s boys could fill the vacancy was an unmitigated victory in a month that sorely needed them.

Henry stood before the wide desk. Conjuring the man behind it took no effort; Robert so resembled their father that he might as well be in the room with the man himself. With a deep breath, he mentally assembled his report. “I believe presenting a united front about Mother’s care will have the best chance of success.”

“Whatever you think best.” Robert’s back remained straight, his posture impeccable, his hands clasped lightly behind him. “You know her mind better than I.”

Cordial, but distracted or disinterested. Even in his speech he mimicked Father. A flicker of irritation stirred, and Henry stamped it down. Mother had hinted that Father had had more emotional depth than Henry could have known as a child; he ought not paint his brother with the same brush. His own equanimity frequently covered an all-consuming fire Alice and Jay greatly enjoyed provoking.

Henry pitched a low laugh with the curling warmth of self-deprecation, casual and disarming. “Alas, I’ve been contending with her stubbornness for weeks and have been unable to remain objective. Perhaps your dispassion would bring reason to bear on the situation. I’ll be returning to Boston with Alice and Jay on Monday”—the thirtieth, plenty of time for making arrangements—“and I should like to have safeguards in place beforehand.”

Silence greeted him. He studied the cherrywood desk and the matching shelves. The grandfather clock. The antique barrister bookcase with its tidy rows of ledgers and its brass keyholes.

“My dispassion.” A coolness weighted Robert’s voice, the flinch of a man who has touched ice but refuses to remove his fingers from it. “Of course.”

In angling for flattery, Henry had somehow delivered offense instead. Stepping cautiously to the window, he gazed out beside his brother. The battle had given way to the creation of a snow family. “Father always praised your level head.”

Clarifying the compliment won no response at all. The ceiling, twelve feet above as it was throughout the first floor, hung oppressively close. The carved wood panels made the difference, perhaps. The lightness of the music room was lacking here, in Father’s favorite retreat.

Outside, the boys hefted midsections onto their creations with Jay’s assistance. Young Robert was nearly ten now. At that age, Henry’s brother had traveled up north with Father for hunting trips. “Did you take the boys hunting this year?”

Robert swiveled slightly, exposing a raised eyebrow. “No. Why would I?”

“You were an excellent shot.” He nodded toward the wall décor, the taxidermied proof staring back at them with glass eyes. What Father and Robert captured with long rifles, Henry and Mother captured on paper and canvas. “I thought you might keep up the tradition.”

“Hunting was Father’s passion, not mine.” In the yard, the boys ran about, pawing in the snow beneath the trees and returning with sticks for their project. Robert tracked them with his gaze.

“You went with him every year.” Henry had visited the family cabin up north only a few times, a summer vacation treat when everyone went, Mother and Lina included. The men’s hunting adventures had never been for the son Father deemed sensitive .

“I—” Robert clicked his teeth shut.

Beyond the window, laughter rang out. Jay lay in the snow, kicking his arms and legs in classic snow angel style. Gabriel—or Gabe, as they’d overheard before the boys had gone out—flopped down beside him and copied the motions. Robert—Eddie? That would require time for adjustment—spread his arms dramatically and windmilled to the ground.

Robert pressed his hand to the window frame. His head dipped. “Everyone needs to be somebody’s favorite, Henry. And Mother had already chosen hers.”

Henry’s feet rooted him to the floor, a blessing that prevented him from staggering. The family roles had been so rigidly defined—set in place ages before his arrival and hardening with each passing year. In thirty-nine years, he hadn’t once thought to question whether Robert enjoyed his position as the heir, as Father’s right-hand man. They’d never had the heart-to-heart conversations Alice conducted near weekly with her sister. He knew little more of his older brother than Jay did of his, though Henry’s gap was a mere five years rather than fifteen. “I’m sorry, Robert. My intention was never—”

“No, I know. You were little.” Though it was Robert who appeared little now, his gaze roaming the distant past. “She needed someone she could mother, and I was off at school. And then she found out you could paint that summer, and everyone fell into their places. Mine was on hunting trips with Father. Yours was with Mother, in the studio or the garden or the kitchen.”

Places he still had, comforts he immersed himself in. Mother had given him a toolkit for finding peace and contentment. “You’re welcome to join me, Robert.”

“I don’t have your skills. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” Robert nodded toward the yard, where Jay, giving Gabe a hand up from his snow angel, comically pretended to overbalance and fell back into the snow while Gabe laughed. “Your husband has known my sons for less than twenty-four hours, and I daresay he understands more about them than I have in all the years of their lives. He’s renamed them—no. He asked them what they wanted. He gave them space to be more than the model family Father wanted of me.”

“Father always saw me as lesser.” Or so Henry had believed. Once he’d lost faith in Father’s omniscience and taken on the responsibility of maintaining vigilance over Mother’s frailty, the only expectations he need meet were his own. “I hadn’t considered how it must have been for you, maintaining the standard of perfection he demanded.”

Robert grunted softly. “He never asked what we wanted.” He tugged the lapel of his robe, scant armor against age-old hurts. “Do you know I don’t even particularly like blue? Father considered it an appropriately masculine color for me to favor. Forty years later, I’m still wearing it. He expected to be obeyed, and I complied. Not like you—you had questions about everything, from the very beginning. Some children babble. You would sit quietly for a long time and then produce a question that startled everyone. I chafed under Father’s rules for decorum, but I knew better than to challenge them the way you did. And now…”

The silence hung; the sunlight filtered through bare branches and glittered across snowy crusts as yet undisturbed by the play outside. Henry kept his voice hushed, reverent. Communion with his brother was rare. Another gift for which he owed Jay his thanks. “And now?”

“I’ve taught my sons to be the same, I fear. Kept Father’s distance, the authoritarian laying down the law, emphasizing dignity and appearance, our public image. That isn’t the man I wanted to be, yet here I am.”

Henry’s chest ached; his eyes dipped closed. What wisdom could he offer his older brother to confront such regrets? Skepticism could shatter this fragile trust, and he was no longer a bewildered younger brother trying to make sense of the growing gulf between them after Robert had left for boarding school. Robert could genuinely be seeking greater connection and meaning in his life. “Change has no expiration date. It requires only the willingness to try.”

“Gabe and Eddie.” Shoulders stooped, Robert leaned more heavily against the window frame. “They deserve a father who isn’t away on business half the year or more concerned with work than he is with making memories together.” Turning from the window, Robert pressed his back to the wall and surveyed the room, the monument to their father’s passions. “There’s some advice for you, little brother. When you start your family, make time for them. It goes by too quickly, and you can’t recapture it when it’s gone.”

No. One couldn’t regain the lost time, undo the poor choices, accept the love and support that would have made the past weeks quite different. “But you may choose to realign your priorities going forward.”

“Starting with Mother.” Robert settled onto the short leather sofa, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. “Before I lose my chance entirely. Acquaint me with the particulars?”

“You should talk with her.” Henry seated himself beside his brother, their kinship a stronger tug at his heart than it had been in more than thirty years. “About her health, if you like, but firstly about your childhood. I recently had occasion to hear stories I was unfamiliar with that might interest you. About how hard she worked to preserve your precious time together when you were an infant. How dearly loved you were. And”—a suspicion, unconfirmed, but rising amid the new evidence—“how much of Father’s rigidity may have been influenced by the presence of older generations in the house when we were young. He had appearances to keep up for his parents as well.”

“I remember.” Robert grimaced; his knuckles whitened. “I spoke at dinner once—I might have been four or five? Before you were born, certainly. Mother might have been excused from the table for her pregnancy nausea. Our great-grandmother told Father that I should know better than to interrupt adults, and that if I spoke out of turn again, he should send me to fetch a switch.”

Father had slapped Henry once. But corporal punishment had not featured regularly in their household. He had never been spanked or switched or threatened with either. Five years could create a wider gulf than he knew. “We grew up in different homes.”

“We did.” Robert smoothed his robe across his knee and removed nonexistent lint. “I doubt you would recall anything before Mother took charge of the house.” His laugh came tinged with a bitter edge. “Explaining to Father when Constance and I wed that we would not, in fact, be coming to live in the family home as he and Mother did when they married was challenging, to say the least. I had to rely heavily on touting Portland as the epicenter of future business deals. That, he understood.”

“I wish we’d spent more time together, you and I.” The urge coursing through him likely matched the spark Jay experienced as he rekindled the sibling bond with his own older brother. Henry had had Will nearly all his life. Had Robert had a surrogate brother? Did he have anyone now to unburden himself to? Someone who could relate to his experiences? “Perhaps as you are mapping this new plan for your family, you might save a corner for our relationship.”

“More than a corner.” Robert gestured toward the window as a flash of navy blue raced past. “I can’t deprive the boys of their uncle Jay. I should like to say—” Angling his body sideways, Robert rested a hand on Henry’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “I know we’ve never been especially close, but I am truly happy for you. You and your husband and your wife.” He puffed a bit of air, his nose wrinkling. “Even though it’s cumbersome to say. You and your spouses? That’s better, yes.” Gray eyes so like Father’s took him in, but rather than disappointment, they glowed with a quiet joy. “Constance and I discussed weeks ago what we would say to the boys about Uncle Henry’s guests. But we’ve needed no explanations. You need no explanation. The way you look at Alice and Jay, with your heart in your eyes, is how I feel about Constance every day. Congratulations, Henry. I couldn’t have wished anything better for you than what you have found yourself.”

He lacked words. His throat swallowed them, working silently in astonishment, his eyes stinging. Robert’s approval had not been something he recognized wanting. But the having of it eased a roughness in his chest.

“Now.” Robert patted his back and released him. “Tell me what we’re to do about Mother.”