The phone rings. I stare at it, unsure of whether it is really ringing. I’m afraid to find out the truth. After it stops ringing, I pick it up and listen to the dial tone. I place it back on the cradle, and it immediately begins to ring again. Dad comes to the doorway and stares at me.
I pick it up.
“Hey, Grace. It’s me, Will.”
“Will?”
“You didn’t show up at the lab this afternoon, so I thought I would check in. You know, make sure you made it home okay.”
“I’m home.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, and clears his throat. “You coming in today?”
“What time is it?”
“Four.”
I listen for Dad in the kitchen, but he is gone. “I don’t know.”
“I could come pick you up if you—”
“No.”
“It’s not a problem, Grace. I remember where you live.”
“What? How?”
“Remember your dad had me over for dinner? I think you had some kind of school thing. . . .”
“Yeah, I stopped coming to those dinners as soon as I got my license. There was always some after-school thing I could go to. Sometimes I even just sat on the side of the road watching the cars pass. Anything to stay out of the house.” I remember all those dinners with the new recruits. The way Dad always needed to show them photos of Mama and me. How much all their work meant on a personal level. That was Dad. Making sure they knew what they were fighting for. Her. Him. Us. The love story.
“You must have hated hearing the same stories.”
I glance up at the photos. “No, not really. I loved the stories. I just couldn’t take the sad look in their eyes when Dad had such hope in his. But he never saw that, because he was too lost in all his hoping. . . .”
I don’t want to talk about the relentless crushing weight of a bird clipped flightless, its beak an open maw needing to be fed and fed and fed. Even in the face of a reality clear as an open vein, my father refused to see it, with each day, which collected into months, then years, as the hemorrhaging continued, and she was not found, the location of the gene was not found, the cure was not found. After over a decade of searching, researching, testing—the finite limits of our bodies and minds must yield at some point. Life does not exist without death. But “hopeless” was not in his vocabulary.
I look around at this empty house that was supposed to be a home for us. When she returned and we could be whole again. But it is not her or her ghost that returns, but my father. My father and his hoping filling my thoughts until I, too, cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel where the mind ends and the fabric of this world begins.
“Grace?”
“What?”
“Grace, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I snap. But as soon as I say the words, it feels like we both know the truth. I start to pick at the dried blood on my face.
“All right,” he says. “How about dinner tomorrow at the diner? We can walk over from the lab.”
“I don’t like to stay that late,” I say. “You don’t have to be nice to me because of my father.”
“Who says I’m being nice to you just for him?”
I grip the phone harder. “Well then, what is it? Help the Orphan Day?”
“You know, Grace, maybe it’s not all about you,” he says quietly. “Maybe I need someone . . . someone to talk to about who I lost. You’re not the only one who feels this. Maybe I need a friend.”
The rawness in Will’s voice summons such an ache in my heart. I curl forward to insulate the pain. There are no sounds of the train. No whispers, no footsteps upstairs. Only the truth of the cobalt twilight filtering into the kitchen, illuminating the two chairs at the kitchen table, one still tucked into place from the last time social services came by to check and see how I was managing on my own. I see the two mugs of coffee sitting on the counter from yesterday. Every morning I pour him a fresh cup. Every night I throw it out before I go to bed.
I can see the ghost of me moving through the kitchen. Every day. Existing. Leaning against the counter. Standing. Staring out the window. If I close my eyes and listen, really listen, Dad will return to me. He will come back to me. I trace the noises of the house. Where is he? The slow leak in the upstairs bathtub faucet. The monotone hum of the refrigerator.
“Grace?”
“Grace, let’s have some soup.”
“I have to go, Will.” I slowly lower the phone to its cradle and then look up.
Dad leans forward, his hands gripping the edge of the doorway to the kitchen. The rectangular frame like a photo, opens a door into a place when he was always there for me.
Autumn
She stood next to the
