Part 4
“The house I own,” I said.
Ben didn’t answer. On the table in front of me, June’s binder was open to a recipe for a cake she’d made once and crossed out with the word dry. I shut it and waited.
“You didn’t even talk to us,” he said.
“I’ve spoken to Rachel about what I need to do. You have until the end of September.”
“I’m coming over.”
“All right.”
“The kids have things for you.”
“I’d like to see them.”
He brought them at four. Caroline stayed in the car, and I could see her looking down at her phone through the living room window. Owen had a small box with a dark stone inside; Lucy carried a postcard and the same field guide she’d held on the porch.
“It’s from a volcano,” Owen said. “They had them in the store.”
I put it on the windowsill where he could see it. Lucy’s postcard showed a whale’s tail. She’d written Wish you were here beneath the printed words, then added a little whale of her own in the corner.
“Thank you,” I said.
She watched me read it. “Dad said you didn’t want to come because the trip was too much.”
“I wanted to come.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Your parents made a different plan.”
Ben put his hands on the back of a chair. “We talked about this in the car.”
“No,” Lucy said. “You told me.”
He pulled the chair out and sat down. I asked Owen where he’d found the stone, and he explained the difference between the loose ones and the ones in boxes. Lucy waited until he finished, then showed me photographs on Ben’s phone.
Most were too blurred to identify. One had a bald eagle perched above the harbor, its white head a sharp spot against the gray sky. She enlarged it with two fingers and held the screen so I could see.
“I found that one before anybody else did.”
“You certainly did.”
“Nobody saw the puffin.”
We bent over the field guide together. Owen leaned against my shoulder and asked whether there was anything to eat. I got crackers and apple slices while Lucy told me about a naturalist on the ship who could recognize birds by the way they flew.
Ben ate a cracker but didn’t take off his jacket. When Lucy asked whether we could go to the waterfront the next week, he said they’d have to see.
She lowered the book and didn’t ask again.
I wanted to offer a day and a time. Instead, I told her I’d like that whenever her parents could arrange it. She was still holding the book when Ben stood and said Caroline was waiting.
At the elevator, Lucy took my hand. “I put dates on the list I gave you.”
“I found it.”
“You can still look at it.”
“I will.”
She hugged me, and Owen came back for another cracker. I gave him two in a paper towel and watched the elevator doors close.
When Ben returned alone, I was still standing in the hall.
“Don’t tell them we’re keeping you away,” he said.
“I told Lucy I wanted to go. I won’t tell her I was sick.”
“She doesn’t need the whole story.”
“I agree.”
He went back into the living room. I left the children’s plates on the table and sat opposite him, with the whale postcard beside my hand. He looked at it before he began.
“Do you know what it costs to move a family? First month’s rent, last month’s rent, the deposit. We don’t have that sitting in an account.”
“You have time to make arrangements.”
“And what do I tell Caroline? That I lost our savings and now I’ve lost our home?”
“You can tell her I’ve given you notice.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” He leaned forward. “I used the savings because I thought the business would give us a future. I wasn’t buying toys. I was trying to make something the kids could have someday.”
“You took a risk with your money. You can’t make me take it with mine.”
“You’ve helped before.”
“I agreed to help before.”
He looked around the room. When I’d moved in, he’d assembled the desk under the window and stayed late because the drawers wouldn’t line up. I remembered the two of us eating takeout on the floor, laughing at the instructions. He’d made sure the lamps were plugged in before he left.
“Is this because we took the trip without you?” he asked.
“It hurt. But I didn’t know about the loan when I came home. I found that out afterward.”
“If you’d just hear Neal explain—”
“He can explain it to a lender who agrees to finance his business. I’m not going to do it.”
Ben pulled at a loose thread on his sleeve. “You’re making decisions about everything at once. The bank, the house, us. Caroline thinks something’s going on.”
“Something is going on.”
“You know what I mean. Since Mom died, you’ve been alone so much. You forgot bills after your surgery. I was the one there, Dad. I saw it.”
“I needed your help. I thanked you for it.”
“Now I try to do something and you treat me like a stranger.”
I said nothing. He rubbed the thread between his fingers until it broke. Outside, Caroline sounded the horn once.
“Neal put us in touch with an attorney,” he said. “He says there are ways to get help when a parent won’t listen.”
“Then your attorney can speak to Rachel.”
“I didn’t want it to get to this.”
“I didn’t either.”
I walked him to the door. He paused beside Owen’s stone, then left without touching it. From the window, I saw Lucy move her backpack to make room for him in the car.
The following week, a man approached me as I carried groceries from my car. He asked my name and handed me an envelope. I took it upstairs with the grocery bags, set everything on the counter, and opened it.
Inside was a petition seeking the appointment of a guardian and conservator for me. My son was the petitioner…
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