I looked over my shoulder at him.
“We try again.”
It turned.
I got both hands on that handle and pulled, and the door came up with a groan you could hear across the yard, and dust came rolling out through a band of afternoon sunlight.
What My Father Had Been Building for Five Years
At first it was just shapes under drop cloths.
Then the light got in past me and reached the wood.
A crib. Handmade — mortise and tenon, no hardware showing anywhere.
Beside it, a changing table. A chest of drawers. A rocking chair.
Moons carved along the top rail of the crib. Stars across the drawer fronts. Small wooden clouds tucked underneath the arms of that chair.
Aunt Sandy put her hand over her mouth.
“Oh, Byron.”
I stepped inside. Everybody else stayed behind that line on the concrete, and nobody had to be told.
I pulled the cloth off the rocking chair.
Where He Carved My Name
My name was underneath one of the arms.
Not across the headrest where anybody could see it. Not on the back.
Underneath — where the only person who’d ever find it is somebody sitting in that chair with their hand wrapped around the arm at two in the morning.
“He made this for me.”
Joshua was in the doorway.
“He knew we wanted kids someday.”
I turned around.
“You told him?”
“He asked me what kind of future I pictured. That was — I think that was the second time I met him.”
I looked at that crib.
My father built it for a child who does not exist yet. He built it for a future he understood he might not be around to see.
What My Brother Said About It
Greg’s voice came from behind Joshua.
“That’s what he had locked up for five years? Baby furniture?”
His voice was too light. Wrong pitch entirely.
Sadie pointed past me toward the back wall.
“Chloe — what’s behind the crib?”
There was an old tube television on a rolling cart, and beside it, a row of tapes standing upright in a plastic bin.
I crossed that garage and read the first two labels.
FOR CHLOE — WITH EVERYONE PRESENT.
GREG’S PROMISES.
And something hit the concrete behind me.
The Phone That Shattered
Greg’s phone had come out of his hand.
The screen broke across the corner.
And every bit of color went out of my brother’s face.
“Greg?” Aunt Sandy said.
