My smile falters. “What’s wrong?”
“You tell me.” She turns a pointed glance downward and clears her throat.
I follow her gaze to our still linked hands.
I chuckle sheepishly. “You remember.”
She strokes my thumb with hers. “Of course I do.” Her frown curves up into a smile that is half reproach, half affection. “I may not have given birth to you.” She squeezes my hand. “But for as long as you’ve been able to, you’ve reached for my hand when you were worried about seeing your dad.”
I sigh and relax my hand beneath hers. “I can’t pretend I’m happy to be back. This house was never a happy place for me. But I’ll be fine.”
“I know.” She gives my hand a pat and then folds her hands in her lap. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
There’s a quick knock on the frosted glass partition in front of us and Alice touches a button above us to open it.
“Do you have the code for the gate or do I need to call up?” Ian, our driver asks when the partition lowers.
There’s a couple seconds of silence before I realize Alice is looking at me.
“I don’t know the code anymore.”
“Of course you do. It’s nineteen eighty-seven,” she says and then shakes her head. “I can’t believe you forgot that when it’s the year you were born.”
“He never changed it?” I watch the driver punch it in with a skeptical eye.
“Of course not,” Alice says, but I don’t miss the way her posture relaxes when the gate starts to open. “Your father is a creature of habit. He wanted you to be able to come home whenever you were ready.” She pats my leg and casts me a smile.
“Yeah, as long as I agreed to live exactly as he thought I should,” I remind her.
Her smile falters.
“Sorry, I know you love him. But you have to understand that he’s never even given me that chance.”
Alice is my dad’s younger sister and has lived with us since I was born. Despite the acrimony between me and her son, Oz, she has always been my soft place to land. But her hero worship of my father clouds her vision and frustrates me.
“Oh, Kwame… Some people just don’t know what to do with love. Your mother saw it as a weakness. Your father is scared of it.”
“What about me?” I ask before I can think better of it.
“You?” Her hand covers mine and her fingers curl around my knuckles to squeeze the fist I’ve made. “You’re afraid to trust it.” She speaks softly but the truth of it echoes through me like a sonic boom.
“It’s not your fault,” she says before she lets go of my hand.
But itismy problem. One I’d like to get over so that I don’t end my final days surrounded only by things money can buy. I want to trust it. I want to be trusted.
The car lumbers through the entrance and begins the nearly mile long drive to the main house. I open the window and the breeze rushes in and brushes my skin in warm billows that carry the phantom smells of my youth—fresh cut grass, the bitter green sap mingled with the sweet honey of the blooming cherry blossom trees that line the drive.
Even after it ceased to be the haven it once was, it remained as much a part of me as I am of it.
The green lawns were fertilized by the skin of my knees, my sweat, my tears.
I thought I’d live here one day. Instead, it’s a symbol of everything I don’t want my life to be—walled off, large and empty.
For most of my life, it was a signal of my father’s success and a legacy that I would one day be the steward of. It was sewn into every article of clothing, every piece of luggage, embossed on stationary, the gold flatware, the sheets we slept on at night.
It’s a gorgeous spring day and the lavender, germaniums, hyacinth, and roses are putting on a show. But for me, they can’t compete with the herbaceous copse of trees that frame the outline of the main house. Native American Beech, White Oak, Red Oak, and the Tulip Poplar that my mother dedicated her time here restoring stand like sentinels on the terrain that only cedes it’s rich, rugged run when it comes face to face with the Potomac River.
The house sits fifty yards from its banks and the current becomes audible as we approach the tile-paved circular drive at the front door.
