Page 148 of Season of Gifts

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.Youneed 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.”

Chapter seventy-six

Alice

Alicewasgonnaneeda wheelbarrow to roll herself off the music room couch.Henry’s family did the formal Christmas meal in the afternoon, and after stuffing themselves silly, it was getting on toward naptime.Mother, tipping toward snoozing, had stopped guiding Alice through photos of Henry’s school days and gracefully allowed Henry to help her to her bedroom.Jay had taken the boys and their inexhaustible energy back outside.Henry’s brother and his wife had disappeared upstairs while holding hands, supposedly to nap.

“Nap, uh-huh.”Alice paged through a photo album on the coffee table.

Henry in class, wearing a uniform with a collared shirt and tie.Henry accepting awards.Henry in an art studio, his gaze focused on the easel in front of him, the tilt of his head familiar even on his slender teenage form.His chest and shoulders only filled out later in the album, about the time he flirted with facial hair.

“Disastrous,” he murmured behind her.His hand settled on her shoulder.“Junior year.Will and I goaded each other into trying to grow beards.”

Henry circled the couch and claimed the seat beside her, his thigh tight against hers.

They’d been nearly this close last night, rocking Jay between them in the moonlight.She rested her hand above his knee.“Well, I know how Santa’s turned out.What happened to yours?”

“Ah, yes, the girls swooned for his hirsute look.Manly, they said.Rugged.”He laid his hand atop hers, his nails neatly manicured, his palm soft despite his strength.“Mine surrendered to the razor after two months of waiting for patches to fill in.”

“Is there evidence of that?”Laughing, she flipped the pages forward, but the scraggly beard made no more appearances.

“Burned,” he teased, rubbing his clean-shaven cheek against her.“The evidence of such youthful follies has been excised from existence long since.”

The album fell flat on a page with a single large photo, one of the few with a casual Henry.His school tie hung loose; he’d unbuttoned the top of his shirt and left the collar open.Legs stretched out before him, feet bare, he lay propped on his elbows on a picnic blanket with Will and a girl beside him.Will dangled a whole mess of grapes above the girl’s head; she shot him a fondly exasperated glare.

“Is that his wife?Did they meet at school?”The three of them looked comfortable together, enjoying a sun-dappled afternoon with a hint of autumn in the leafy trees.

“He would’ve been much better off if she were.”Henry drew his finger along the edge of the page, slow and deliberate.“No, he didn’t court Vivian until college.That’s Gretchen Spencer.Merriam, now; she wed some years ago.”

“You seem cozy.”A tingle traveled along her spine, more curiosity than jealousy.Holding on to secrets from the past had nearly ruined their Christmas.The photo conveyed an intimacy unglimpsed in the rest of Henry’s school days.“You and her and Will.”

“We were inseparable our senior year.”His rumbling amusement sounded like her Henry once more, no longer a hair away from losing his shit but fully in control, gently teasing her because he could.

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