Page 156 of Season of Gifts

A howling wind swirled in his chest.Selfish of him to wish to go first, to not be left yearning for Alice and Jay the way Mother pined for Father after his death.“You loved him a great deal.Seeking out touchstones to recover that closeness is a sensible response to the pain of loss.”

Mother abstractly nodded agreement, her gaze fixed on the bookcase across from them.“Imagine my surprise when I discovered those ledgers are journals.”

Imagining was unnecessary; his heartbeat tripped over itself trying to accommodate the sudden rush of adrenal confusion.“Personal writings?”

“Mm-hmm.”Sliding her arm around his back, she hugged him to her side.How Mother, so slight in height and build beside him, could generate such an excess of warmth and comfort that returned him instantly to a state of small and protected must surely be one of the great mysteries of the universe.“Your father being your father, he seems to have written an entry for every day of his adult life.You may find them illuminating.”

“Thank you, Mother.”Speculation cast great swathes of color across the canvas of the mind.A man like his father might daily record the dishes at meals, the visits from colleagues throughout the workday, the precise moment he stepped away for a turn in the garden with Mother in the evening.Or his buttoned-up exterior might have hidden a passionate poet at the heart.He had so little to draw upon to sketch a true portrait of Father.“Are there volumes you would prefer I leave untouched?”

At the press of Mother’s hand, he obligingly bent his head for a soft kiss on the cheek.

Her perfume whispered of the garden in late spring, the flowers venturing out after the final frost.“I leave it to you to decide what and how much you want to know, darling.”

She rose from the sofa and raised a stern finger at him.“If you linger here too long, however, I will send your spouses in after you.”

He assumed a neutral expression, cloaking his face in innocence.“That is hardly a deterrent, Mother.I quite enjoy their company.”

If he wished to disrupt the dour atmosphere of Father’s study, Jay’s sunny disposition and Alice’s fascination with new knowledge would accomplish the feat handily.

Narrowed eyes gave way to Mother’s enigmatic smile.“I sense a spark of Jay’s playfulness in that cheeky response, darling.I’ll leave you to it.”

She exited, closing the door behind her, and he remained in the profound stillness, with only the motion of the antique clock for company.

Uncurling his hand revealed three small keys.He pushed aside the others and raised the coppery brass one—an old-fashioned skeleton key with a narrow barrel and a wide, artful grip.The barrister bookcase boasted five shelves behind glass, and ledger books filled each row.By a rough estimate, if Father had truly written an entry every day of his adult life, more than twenty thousand waited for his examination.

But did he want to know?

The question crawled across his skin, leaving vellus hairs standing on end.His psyche had decades invested in painting Father into a specific frame: cool, distant, judgmental.His sons were provided for but neither coddled as children nor confided in as adults.

The leatherbound volumes awaiting his decision might reveal a different man entirely.Such a feat might leave him with regret for the man he’d never known.The journals would not be an objective measure, either, no more unbiased than the lens of Henry’s childhood.But Mother expected he would find them rewarding.

Henry rose from the couch slowly.Each step became a deliberate choice, listening to the currents of his body.If he came to know his father as a man, the grasping remembrances of childhood moments in this room might fall away—carry less importance in the overall map of his life.

He was nothing if not an eager student of knowledge.

The key slipped into the first lock, silent and well-oiled despite their age, and turned until a sharp click granted him access.He laid the keyring atop the bookcase and raised the glass, sliding it neatly back into the shelf and smoothing the front edge.Many hands had traveled the same path, giving the wood an almost waxen quality, soft and rounded against his palms.

“All right, Father.”He pulled a ledger from the right side of the shelf.“I would see you as you saw yourself.”

The pages fell naturally open at the sewn-in bookmark, a ribbon so deeply green he might have called it black in some lights.The date in the corner, written with strong, precise strokes, would have put Father in his late twenties.

Miss Bennett arrived with her parents for tea this afternoon.Father has been pursuing a business venture with her father in refrigerated trucking.I was determined to dislike her, as I sense Mother’s strong hand in the familial invitation.She works herself into a state at least once a month to impress upon me her despair that I have not yet wed and produced heirs.I suppose I ought to be glad she has stopped trying to pair me with Annalise’s school friends.Though she will not say so to Mother and Father, Annalise has told me that her compatriots are “smart gals” who will not “waste themselves” on marriage.She herself is undecided on the subject but would very much like to continue her musical education.That ought to be an interesting dinner conversation some evening soon.

I should like to marry her.Helen, obviously, not Annalise.She is smart, with a sly wit, and so poised she put Mother to shame, though I think that a front.Her hand trembled as we strolled among the oaks and maples on the grounds, never far from the watchful eyes of both sets of parents.She is twenty-two, soon to be twenty-three, with delicate features and the green of spring in her eyes.And observant, my heavens.She carries on silently, listening as I explain some thorny matter, then stuns me with a question that shows more insight than the most senior of my associates.

He sat heavily on the floor, re-reading the lines.Turning the page merely advanced him to the next day, with no more said about Mother.But even these glimpses were more than he’d imagined had existed beneath the veneer of the rigid, unemotional man who’d lived by appearances.

Laying the book aside, he opened all of the cabinet fronts.His heart leapt with each solidthunkas they settled back in their niches, leaving Father’s life spread before him.A feast at his fingertips, with only his desires and his conscience to guide him.Someday he might make a full survey.For now, he hopped from age to age with little method behind his choices.

Nearly an hour passed before he gathered his courage to reach for the dates so formative to his younger self.His body resisted, the aches and pains of sitting on the rug for a lengthy stretch making themselves known.Stop now, his lower back throbbed in a message akin to Morse code.His knees joined the battle, the joints popping as he shifted positions.

But he persisted, pulling forth the correct book and slipping through page after page until he reached December.Cautious hope for another child.A meditation on the joys of winter.An assessment of Robert’s first semester at school and a pledge to steer him more heavily into the family business the following summer.Fingers shaking, Henry turned the page.

Our daughter is dead.

A vast emptiness of gridded ledger lines carried down the page.Father had written no more that day.

The days following took on a numb, mechanical tone—Father dutifully recording Mother’s medical condition and his instructions to Lina: withhold the news from the children, allow Christmas to go on without him and Mother, and leave the door to the nursery shut for their arrival.No overt evidence of grief showed itself, but it lay in the terse lines and the refuge of unimportant details.

---