Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [101]
I thanked the driver, marveling at the businesslike tone of my voice, which I heard through the still-thumping blood in my ears. I tried to mimic my father’s purposeful walk as I started down the sidewalk toward the house, but I felt clumsy, off balance. I stowed my overnight bag in the scraggly front bushes. I had a flash of a thought that this neighborhood might not be safe and my bag might get stolen, but it hardly seemed important.
I put my foot on the first of the steps. The house had shutters that were closed tight over the front windows. No sounds from inside. The silence made sense, though. My father and I had been silent for so long.
No choice but to climb the stairs, to put my feet one after another, to place my hand on the cool black iron of the doorknob and to turn it.
The door opened into a small front living room, empty but for a nubby green couch and an old TV. There seemed to be no hallways. From the living room I could see into the next room, a bedroom, obviously, from the double bed, neatly made with plain white sheets. There was another room beyond that and then another. A murmur of voices came from one of those rooms. The blood in my head pounded louder. Could my father hear it? Could he hear my footsteps on the softly creaking floorboards? Apparently not, because the voices kept talking, speaking words I couldn’t make out but growing louder.
I passed through the living room; I walked through the bedroom. I noticed a woman’s blouse folded at the foot of the bed, along with a quilt. A red-and-white quilt, half-made apparently, for there seemed to be squares missing. My pulse grew stronger; I could feel it in my fingertips, my stomach, my neck. She was making you a quilt.
The next room was another bedroom, this one with two twin beds. The voices became stronger. I could see the edge of a table in the following room, the kitchen. I could see a man’s arm on the brown wood.
“It’s over!” said an unfamiliar male voice. His tone was insistent, angry, but controlled. “We’ve got families, too. This has gone too far. Way too far! It has to end.”
“You’re right,” my father said. It was his courtroom voice, measured, deliberate. “This is the last time. I’ve told you that before. But if we hadn’t done this now, then all these years, they would be worth nothing.”
“They weren’t worth anything.” This time a woman’s soft voice. “Maybe it made sense at the beginning, but somewhere it got out of control. And it wasn’t worth it.”
“It was,” my father said.
I stepped into the kitchen. Two people sat at the table. My father stood near it, his briefcase at his feet. His mouth opened in a small O. He looked as if he might break into song.
“Hailey,” he said, his voice a rough croak.
The two people at the table were silent. A man and a woman. Caroline looked older than the wedding picture I’d seen. “Hailey,” she said, as if mimicking my father. And then she began to weep quietly.
My brother, Dan, wore a yellow golf shirt and jeans. His sandy-brown hair was a little silver near the temples. He’ll look like Dad, I thought.
We all sat there, like actors on a stage, waiting for our directions, for someone to call out our lines. But there was only a resounding silence that seemed louder than any scream.
Finally, I found words in my mouth. “Someone better tell me.” It might not have made sense to someone else, but it was all I could say, and no one looked confused.
My father’s shoulders sagged, as if he had just heard a guilty verdict from a jury. Caroline wiped her eyes but kept crying.
“You’re all grown up,” Dan said. A little smile moved his mouth.
“Someone better tell me,” I said again.
My father looked aged and sick all of a sudden, like an old man talking to ghosts that no one else sees. “Hailey, I can explain—”
“Dad,” Dan said, cutting him off. How strange that word sounded, coming from his lips. “It’s too late. This has got to stop.” He looked at me again, but this time it wasn’t a look of pride for a little sister,