Eleanor stayed through the weekend.
By Sunday morning, she had discovered three unpaid electricity bills hidden inside a cookbook, a saucepan scorched beyond repair, and a small pile of letters Margaret had written to her dead husband.
Most were ordinary.
Arthur, the roses have come up early this year.
Arthur, Daniel says the roof needs fixing again.
Arthur, I couldn’t find my glasses this morning. They were in the refrigerator.
The last letter was dated two weeks earlier.
Arthur, I think there is something wrong with me. Yesterday I forgot the name of the street where we have lived for fifty-three years. Daniel looked frightened, although he tried not to show it. I don’t want to become another thing he has to carry.
Eleanor read the sentence three times.
Then she folded the paper along its original creases and placed it back inside the envelope.
Her father was in the garage when she found him, repairing the wooden step outside the back door.
“She knows,” Eleanor said.
Daniel looked up.
“Knows what?”
“That something’s wrong.”
He drove another nail into the timber.
“Sometimes she does.”
Eleanor handed him the letter.
He read it slowly. When he finished, he remained crouched beside the step, holding the paper between his roughened fingers.
“She wrote that?” he asked.
Eleanor nodded.
Daniel lowered his head.
For the first time since arriving, Eleanor noticed how much he had aged. There were deep creases beside his mouth, and his hair had thinned above his temples. His hands, once steady enough to repair watches and rebuild engines, trembled slightly as he folded the letter.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were struggling?” she asked.
He looked toward the garden.
“Because you’re my daughter.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is to me.”
She sat beside him on the step.
For several minutes, they listened to the distant sound of a lawn mower and the occasional passing car.
“When your mother died,” Daniel said eventually, “you were fourteen. Do you remember what you asked me at the hospital?”
Eleanor remembered very little of the hospital itself. She remembered vending-machine coffee, the smell of disinfectant, and a nurse who had brought her a blanket.
“No.”
“You asked whether we would have to sell the house.”
She looked at him.
“I did?”
“You were worried about losing your bedroom.”
Daniel gave a small, tired smile.
“I told you we weren’t going anywhere. I had no idea how I was going to keep that promise.”
Eleanor studied his face.
He had never spoken about the financial difficulties that followed her mother’s death. She knew he had worked long hours at the hardware store, and she remembered that her grandmother had moved in soon afterward. But she had been too young to understand why her father sometimes fell asleep at the dinner table or why Christmas presents became smaller.
