The mugs nearly slipped from her fingers. She stopped dead in the doorway. The heavy brown filing cabinet, the one that had stood in the same spot since she was seven, had been dragged out into the middle of the floor. Behind where it had stood was a door in a dark walnut with a dull brass handle.
Linda swallowed. Her throat went dry, and the steaming mugs of tea were forgotten in her hands. It was a door she hadn’t laid eyes on since she was seven years old.
"Michael," Linda said, and her voice came out small. "What on earth are you doing?"
Michael turned from where he stood in front of it. He didn't say anything for a moment. He just looked at her, and Linda saw on his face the same thing that was rising in her own chest, swift and enormous and impossible to push back down.
"I'm solving our office problem," Michael said quietly. "And finally facing old ghosts."
Linda's eyes instantly filled with a shock of burning tears. She set the two mugs down on the desk before she dropped them as her hands began to shake and her knees didn’t feel so stable anymore.
"That's Dad's door," Linda whispered.
"I know." Michael turned back to the door and nodded.
"We haven't opened that door since..." Linda stopped. She couldn't finish it.
"Since the day he died," Michael said for her.
Linda crossed the office slowly until she was standing beside her brother, the top of her head reaching only to his shoulder. A place where she'd always instinctively gone when she needed comfort or to feel safe, in the shadow of her brother's physical and emotional strength. The two of them stood looking at the door together. Behind it was the office their father had worked in every day for the first years of their lives. The office that had been closed up and hidden away when James Heart had not come home after what was supposed to be the final time he'd be deployed, marking the end of his military career. When they'd hugged him goodbye as he shouldered his pack, they hadn't realized just how final that deployment was going to be.
The lump rose in her throat. She didn’t feel the salty tears that rolled silently down her cheeks, and her breathing became shallow as the grief surfaced once again.
"Uncle George could have turned it into anything," Linda said softly. "Storage. A second office. Anything. All these years."
"He never touched it," Michael answered. "He just put the cabinet in front of it and left it exactly as it was."
"Why do you think he did that?" Linda breathed.
"Because he couldn't bear to change it," Michael said. "And he couldn't bear to look at it either. So he hid it and left it whole." His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Uncle George was just as broken as Mom when Dad died.”
A memory skittered through her mind. The black cars had just left. Uncle George hadn’t said a word. He turned on his heel and left. Left a shocked Mom, Michael, and her. Linda had been confused.Could it be real? Was Daddy really gone?At first, her young mind had wanted to scream,Where, where did he go? How can he just be gone? How? How could he just go? He was supposed to be there for her seventh birthday, he’d promised.
Linda closed her eyes as the memory sliced through her soul. It had been so long ago, but it still stung badly. She pictured Uncle George on that day. Linda had run after him. Still in shock, she wondered if Uncle George was going to find him. So Linda had run after him. But he hadn’t heard her when she called. As she rushed into the hotel, Uncle George stormed into her father’s office—this office.
Linda was about to go in. The door was slightly ajar. Enough to peek in, but before she could go inside, a loud guttural roar echoed off the walls, followed by the sound of crashing. Her heart pounding, she’d inched further, and her breath hitched in her throat when she saw that Uncle George had wrecked her father’s desk. In her shocked brain, she’d thought that when they found Daddy, he was going to be so mad at Uncle George for messing up his office. But then her breath had hitched in her throat when she watched Uncle George break. He’d collapsed tothe floor, shouting, “James. Why? Why did you go again?” Then he'd broken into soul-racking sobs that had shaken his whole body. “How can you be dead, James? You were supposed to outlive me. I’m the eldest.”
That’s when her eyes had widened, and his words had sliced through her like a hot blade. Linda had stood staring at her uncle, unable to breathe for a moment.Daddy’s dead?She stood staring at her uncle.No. He’s upset. They said Daddy was gone. They’d said sorry to inform you, but your husband, Captain James Heart, is gone.That’s the part she and Michael had heard when they finally got to the front of the house.Lost in the line of duty.They had said gone and lost, not dead. They hadn’t said dead!
Suddenly, there was no air. Her young self had clutched at her throat. She’d needed air. Linda had turned and bolted. She hadn’t known where she was going. She’d just run. Michael had found her twenty minutes later, cuddled into a tight ball in her secret spot on the beach. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and her little body shuddering from the cold and wracking sobs that had ripped through her heart.
Uncle George had sealed the room after that. No one went in there ever again except the cleaning crew once a week, under strict instructions never to disturb anything other than the dust bunnies that crept in over time.
“Linda?” Michael’s voice pulled her from her thoughts. “Are you okay?” His voice was soft, and his eyes were filled with emotion. She knew he was having the same thoughts and reliving memories similar to hers.
“I’m fine,” Linda nodded, giving her brother a watery smile as he reached down and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“I can do this alone,” Michael told her.
“No,” Linda said, adamantly shaking her head. “It’s time.”
Linda reached out and touched the cool brass handle with determination.
"Okay, together then.” Michael took her free hand.
"Together," Linda whispered.
Michael's hand closed over hers on the handle. The two of them turned it at the same time. The latch gave with a soft click that sounded way too loud in the quiet office. The door swung inward on hinges that should have shrieked after half a century but didn't, because Uncle George, it turned out, had been quietly oiling them all along.
