Chapter 8 #2
“That chubby cat was one that Maggie drew.” She sob-laughed.
“She was so proud of that cat!” Michael remembered.
“Well, look at it!” Linda sniffed, wiping her cheeks. “It’s art.”
“Maggie is an artist,” Michael pointed out. “She was always able to draw. I think she was drawing before she could walk.”
Linda glanced at her brother, frowning when she saw the soft glow in his eyes, and her brow furrowed.
Does Michael still have a crush on Maggie?
She raised an eyebrow. Linda had known since she and Maggie were fourteen and Michael fifteen that her big brother and best friend liked each other.
A spark of guilt rushed through her when she thought of her failed matchmaking attempt.
One that had cost her one-hundred dollars of her hard-earned money.
She’d thought it was the perfect setup. Linda had even left them alone in a quiet spot on the beach, but nothing had come of it.
After all the dominoes she’d had to line up to get that date setup just right and make it seem natural.
Linda had to bribe the head cheerleader, who was actually grateful to get a date.
And Trevor Collins was a catch. While he and Maggie had dated for two years, she’d known neither of them was that much in love.
Trevor actually had feelings for the head cheerleader, and Maggie for her brother.
Another idea surfaced. They were both single now.
Maybe she should give herself another chance at matchmaking.
Guilt hit her again. Gosh, if they both know she’d been the mastermind behind Trevor dropping Maggie, then Linda giving Michael a gentle push into standing in as Maggie’s hero.
“Linda, are you okay, little sister?” Michael’s voice held concern. “I can do this on my own if it’s upsetting you.”
“What?” Linda blinked in confusion at her brother. For a while, she’d forgotten where they were as she’d been so lost in thoughts of having another go at matchmaking her brother and Maggie. “Sorry, I’m fine, and I want to do this with you.” She looked at him. “But, I get Uncle George's office.”
Michael glanced around the room and gave a slow nod. “I can agree to that.”
“Good,” Linda said and walked towards the blinds. “We need to let in some light.”
She was stopped by her brother's sudden hissing intake of breath. Linda swung around, and his face had gone ashen as she stared into an open desk drawer. Linda walked forward and stopped short. She knew that drawer. It was the goodies drawer. Her father hid everything in there.
"Linda," Michael said. "Come and look at this."
Linda came around beside him. The deep drawer was full of cards. Handmade cards, the paper soft and frayed at the edges, the crayon and marker faded but legible. Birthday cards. Father's Day cards. Dozens of them, stacked carefully on top of one another, every one of them made by a small hand.
Michael lifted the top one out as if it might crumble. On the front, in red crayon, was a heart and the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADY. Inside, in the same wobbling capitals, it said TO THE BEST DAD IN THE HOLE WORLD. LOVE MICHAEL.
“I can’t believe he kept all these," Michael croaked.
Linda lifted out the next card. It was hers. A Father's Day card with a sun and a beach and three stick figures, a tall one and two small ones, all of them with enormous smiles. Inside, she had written HAPPY FATHER'S DAY DADDY YOU ARE MY FAVORITE PERSON. LOVE LINDA.
They went through the cards one at a time, sitting down together on the floor in front of the desk like two children, passing each one back and forth, reading the misspelled words aloud, laughing at the drawings, falling quiet at the dates.
Linda lost track of how long they sat there.
The light from the doorway moved across the floor.
The hotel went on with its quiet business somewhere far away on the other side of the wall, and the two of them sat in their father's office and held the small, soft paper hearts they had given him a lifetime ago.
Eventually, nearly all the cards had been read. Micaheal reached in and froze. “Linda, look.” He pulled out three brightly wrapped boxes with small greeting cards on them. Before he could read the cards, Linda grabbed them.
“They are our birthday presents,” Linda was barely able to speak from the lump that had lodged in her throat. “Whenever he knew he was going away, he’d buy them, wrap them…”
“Put them in his drawer and have Mom deliver them for us,” Michael finished for her.
Linda nodded. “This deep blue one with the silver bow is Maggie's.” She gave it to him to check without even reading the cards. “The gold one is yours.” She handed it to him as well, then took the silver one. “This was mine.” She watched Michael’s brow rise when he read the small cards and realized she’d dished them out correctly.
She gave him a sad smile. “He had his present wrapping color code.”
“That’s right.” Michael laughed as it hit him.
They fell into silence as they sat staring at their gifts.
"Do you remember the day?" Linda asked softly, raising her pain-filled eyes to her brother. She didn't have to say which day. There was only one day she could have meant.
"Every minute of it," Michael answered.
"I was in the garden," Linda said. "I was making something out of shells. You were down on the dock with your fishing rod."
"I remember." Michael nodded.
"And the cars came." Linda's voice dropped as she continued. They had never spoken about it. But suddenly she couldn’t stop the words from escaping.
Words that had been bottled up for too long.
"Three of them. They were big black ones, all in a line, coming up the drive too slow.
I'd never seen cars come up the drive like that.
So slow and so quiet. I knew something was wrong before I even knew what it was. "
"I saw them from the dock," Michael said. "I dropped the rod, and I ran. I remember running, you came running from the garden, and we met on the front lawn."
"And we ran to the house together," Linda said. "Mom was on the front porch already when we got there." She swiped at her cheeks and cleared her throat. “The look in her eyes.”
"She already knew." Michael's voice was hoarse now, thick with the tears he was holding back.
"Mom came out onto the porch before they even got out of the cars.
I'll never forget her face either.” His eyes were shadowed by painful memories.
“ Linda. She knew before they said a single word.
I think she knew before the cars even came into sight. "
"And Uncle George came out behind her," Michael said. "As soon as I heard what the men were saying, I rushed up the stairs. Uncle George was there also. He froze. His face went gray. Mom collapsed as her knees buckled, and I caught her."
Linda told Michael for the first time how she’d followed Uncle George, then when she’d realized that James was gone, they meant gone forever, somewhere we’d never see him again. No one would. So she’d turned and run until her little legs gave in, she’d curled into a ball and sobbed.
"His baby brother," Michael said softly. "They had grown this hotel bigger than it ever used to. They were going to grow old together running this hotel side by side."
That broke her. She drew her knees up to her chest, and the dam finally burst. She wept for her father, who had been twenty-six in his dress uniform on the wall and would never be any older.
She wept for her mother on the porch with her hand on the rail.
She wept for Uncle George, who had closed this office off as a shrine to his younger brother.
She wept for the two children on the lawn who had not yet understood that their whole world had just changed.
Michael put his arm around her and pulled her in against his side, where Linda felt him shaking too, and when she looked up, his face was wet, the unshed tears finally fallen. So she turned her face into his chest and wept with her brother.
"I miss him," Linda said into her brother's shoulder. "After all this time. I still miss him."
"So do I," Michael said. "Every single day."
They sat together on the floor of their father's office and held onto each other, two grown people crying like the children they’d been.
This time, there was something in the letting go that felt less like falling apart and more like setting down a weight they’d been carrying so long she'd forgotten it was there.
And then, slowly, the crying eased.
It eased the way a hard rain eases, all at once and then gently, leaving the air washed clean.
Linda felt the tightness in her chest loosen and loosen and finally let go entirely.
For one moment, sitting there with her brother's arm around her and her father's gift in her lap, she felt a warmth move through her, soft and complete, almost as though a pair of arms had wrapped around them both.
Holding them close for the length of a single breath.
Then it passed and left a deep, quiet peace behind it.
Linda lifted her head.
Across the room, the blinds on the far window were still drawn.
But the light in the room had changed. While they had been sitting there, the gray afternoon cloud outside must have broken, because all at once a shaft of sunlight found the narrow gaps in the old blinds, spreading bright gold bars, falling across the desk, across the corkboard of children's drawings, and across the two of them sitting on the floor.
The room, sealed and shadowed for fifty-two years, suddenly filled with light.
"Michael," Linda whispered.
"I see it," Michael said.
Neither of them moved. The sunlight lay warm across Linda's hands, and her father's faded cards, and the cold ghost of pain, anger, grief, and despair faded from the room, allowing them to breathe freely again.
"I think we needed to do this," Linda said. “It was time to set the ghost of grief that haunted this room free.”
They rose together and walked to the two large windows that swept from one wall to the other, meeting in the middle, and lifted the blinds; the room was flooded with more sunshine.
They stood at the window, brother and sister, lost in their own thoughts, looking out at the bright bay.
For the first time since she had arrived in Sweet Blossom Bay, with all its trouble and worry and the long, hard road still ahead, Linda felt relief; she felt lighter, and was awash with the warmth of a deep knowing that everything was going to be alright and turn out exactly as it should.