“And Allison’s father wouldn’t take the boy? Who would not take his own grandson?”
“He didn’t approve of Allison adopting Amir. But Allison was never close with her parents. Back when we knew her, she hadn’t spoken to them in years. Her father said she didn’t get in touch with him until she got sick and moved home from India. He’s been helping them out for a while, but once Allison died...” His voice lowered. I pressed my ear against the wall. “He wanted to try to send Amir back to the orphanage in India, but someone found Allison’s will. She had set me as Amir’s guardian if anything happened to her. I guess Marigold had told her, years ago, that Horseshoe Cliff was a good place for a child to grow up.”
“But to have you—a single man—take on this responsibility. How could she ask this of you?”
“I must have been her only option.”
“That poor boy. He seems strong at least. Did you see theway he stuck on your horse? He is a determined child. I suppose that is what happens when your childhood is all death and dislocation. Eight years old and to have lived through so much already.” She was quiet for a moment. “Andyou... well, now you have another child to take care of on your own.”
“He’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. We have land for him to run on and a perfectly nice bed for him to sleep on, thanks to you. He’ll go to school with Merrow. What more could a boy need?”
Rei said something I couldn’t make out.
“I know you will, Rei. You always do. You’re good to us.”
“True goodness,” she responded, “is shown by those who have nothing to give but what comes from their heart.”
Amir appeared in the open door of the bedroom. I lifted my finger to my lips and without any other encouragement he joined me in pressing his ear to the wall. I smelled the lemon bread on his breath, the dusty horse scent on his skin. His big eyes blinked inches from mine. They were not as dark as I’d thought them to be; there was honey within the brown, softening them.
My father and Rei must have moved closer to the house, because suddenly Rei’s voice was as clear as if she were in the room with us.
“But what aboutyourhealth, Jacob? When did you last visit the doctor?”
I heard my father laugh.
“I’m serious,” Rei said. “I don’t want to embarrass you, but you were wheezing when you lifted that bed and—”
“Rei, I’m not a young man. I’m meant to huff and puff—”
“And if something happens to you? What will become of these kids then?”
Amir and I stared at each other. Despite the fact that he looked nothing like me, there was something about Amir’s face that made me feel as though I were peering into the dark water of a tide pool and seeing a different version of myself in the reflection. I knew how he felt in that moment listening as Rei speculated about our future; I felt the same way.
Rei said, “Just promise me that you’ll take care of yourself as well as you take care of these children. That’s all I ask.”
“Promises.” I knew my father was smiling; I could hear it, and it reassured me. “You know what I can promise, Rei? I can promise to cut myself an extra big slice of that lemon bread you made. How’s that?”
The sounds of the adults moving away from the window made us straighten.
“Poor Dad,” I said. “He doesn’t know that Bear took off with the rest of the lemon bread.”
I licked my thumb and used it to wipe away the blood on Amir’s elbow. I carefully pressed a bandage over his cut, the way I imagined Allison might have done for him, the way that my own mother might have done for Bear’s scrapes and skinned knees in the years before I was born.
AFTER A WEEKof evenings on the porch watching my father work on his tiny houses, Amir asked if he would teach him how to whittle.
I had learned from Amir’s first day at Little Earth that hewas not a strong reader. He did not listen to Teacher Julie’s lessons with rapt attention as I did, but instead gazed toward the window. At home, though, Amir had taken great interest in my father’s work, following him around the garden and the orchard. He kept his face very still, but his eyes took in everything. He asked questions that I had never thought to ask. Teacher Julie always told us that there were no right questions, but I could see from the way that my father looked at Amir that Amir was asking the right questions. My father showed us every tool in the shed and explained how to use them. In the orchard, there was dusty soil below our boots and plump apples above our heads. Dad told us how our trees—trees that drank the coastal fog—grew deep roots in order to find moisture where they could, seeking out hidden reserves far below the dry surface soil.
Adversity makes them stronger,my father said.Heartier.
Now, my father opened the leather whittling kit his grandmother had given him and handed Amir a knife. I looked up from my book. Amir’s spine straightened. The blade caught the lantern’s light as he turned it in his hand. His expression was unreadable. Then he nodded at my father, ready.
I listened as my father talked about how to safely handle the knife, but I soon returned to the book I was reading. I’d finishedPippi Longstockingand had moved on to a book of Greek myths that I’d found at Little Earth. I loved the goddesses’ dresses, the way they flowed to the ground in silky folds and glittered with shells and pearls. In my entire life, I’d only worn clothes that had been worn first by other people. Withouta television, I rarely caught glimpses of what people outside of our little corner of the world wore. It was only Rei, with her pretty bracelets and wide-brimmed hats, and the characters in the books that I read, who showed me that fancier clothes than mine existed.
I read to my father and Amir as they worked their knives. I noticed that my father smiled when he looked over at Amir’s progress; it made me happy to see him smiling during those hours around sunset when he usually fell quiet.
Amir surprised us with how quickly he became adept at carving. He looked at a piece of wood and saw something else within it. Wood turned into shells and flowers and animals in his hands. Except for a fairy that he’d made for me, he gave all his carvings to Rei to sell along with my father’s. The fairy he made for me had such wild hair and tiny toes and ornately detailed wings that I could not bear to tell him how swiftly I lost her.
The only one of us who was not taken with Amir was, of course, Bear. It seemed to me that the sight of the three of us happily sitting together on the porch each night drove him to an even darker place than he had been previously. My father asked him to join us, but he looked over at my father and Amir with those twin knives in their hands and refused.
