Jeff stood beside the kitchen table.
I waited for him to explain.
He kept one hand beneath the flat object and the other along its edge.
I couldn't see what he was holding.
"Where did you find that?" I asked.
"Upstairs."
He looked toward the ceiling.
"Behind some things in the back bedroom."
I moved my chair aside so he could put it on the table.
He didn't set it down right away.
For a moment, he held it as if he were afraid of damaging it.
Then he lowered it carefully.
I looked at his face.
He was watching me now.
Not the way he had watched me when he arrived with his duffel bag and pillow.
This was different.
He looked uncertain.
Almost embarrassed.
I had seen that expression on him when we were young, usually after he had done something he couldn't explain to our parents.
"What is it, Jeff?"
He rubbed his thumb along the edge.
"I thought you might remember."
I leaned closer.
The kitchen light fell across the object, but I still couldn't make sense of what he wanted me to see.
I was tired.
The day had been long, and I had spent most of it trying to make three bedrooms and a crowded house feel manageable.
I didn't want to guess.
"Tell me what I'm looking at."
Jeff pulled out the chair opposite mine.
He sat down slowly.
For a few seconds, he seemed to be searching for the right words.
Then he looked toward the stairs again.
"The upstairs wasn't as empty as I thought."
I waited.
He shook his head.
"Never mind. I should have asked before I brought it down."
That bothered me more than his hesitation.
He was my brother.
He didn't need permission to show me something he had found in the house.
"You're allowed to ask me questions, Jeff."
He gave a short, tired laugh.
"That's not exactly what I meant."
I understood that much.
There were things between us that had nothing to do with the farmhouse.
We had grown up in the same house, but we hadn't always remembered our childhood the same way.
Sometimes one of us remembered a conversation that the other had forgotten.
Sometimes we had both remembered it and simply never talked about it again.
I looked at the object once more.
I couldn't identify it from what I could see.
Jeff placed his palm against it.
"Do you think Mom knows it's there?"
I looked up.
That was the first time he had mentioned our mother since coming downstairs.
"I don't know."
He nodded as if he had expected that answer.
I wanted to ask what he had found behind the stored things.
I wanted to know why he looked so uneasy.
But I also knew he had spent the day moving his children into a house that wasn't his.
He might have needed a little time before he could explain himself.
So I didn't press him.
I pushed the spiral notebook toward the center of the table to make room.
The old receipts were still inside.
Some were faded, and a few had curled along the edges.
Jeff glanced at them.
"Is that all the work you've done on this place?"
"No. That's just what I kept track of."
He looked at the notebook for another moment.
Then he looked at me.
"I didn't realize it was that much."
"Most people don't."
I wasn't trying to make him feel guilty.
I was answering honestly.
The roof alone had cost fourteen thousand dollars.
The furnace had been another seven thousand eight hundred.
And that didn't count the electrical work or all the smaller repairs that seemed to appear every time we finished something else.
Jeff leaned back.
"I remember the roof."
"You were here when we started it."
"I remember Dad saying it was a waste to spend that much on an old house."
I had forgotten that conversation.
Or perhaps I had remembered it and pushed it aside.
My father hadn't wanted us to spend more money than necessary.
At the time, I thought he was worried about us.
Maybe he had been.
But Dale and I had needed a roof that didn't leak.
We had needed heat.
We had needed wiring that wouldn't leave us worrying every time we turned on an appliance.
Those weren't luxuries.
They were the things that made the farmhouse a home.
Jeff lowered his eyes.
"I guess you and Dale did most of it yourselves."
"We did what we could."
He nodded.
The kitchen fell quiet.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
One of the children was probably getting ready for bed.
Jeff turned toward the sound.
I could see the strain return to his face.
He was trying to look after his children while pretending he wasn't frightened about what came next.
I knew that look.
I had seen it on our father during hard years, though Dad had always hidden it behind work.
I wondered whether Jeff had inherited more of that habit than either of us realized.
I reached for the notebook and closed it.
"The rooms are yours for now," I told him. "You don't have to figure out everything tonight."
He stared at the table.
"I know."
But his voice said he wasn't sure he believed me.
He stood and picked up the object again.
"I'll show you tomorrow."
I could have asked him to leave it there.
Instead, I let him take it upstairs.
I watched him reach the first step.
He stopped briefly, as though he wanted to turn around.
Then he continued.
I sat at the kitchen table after he was gone.
The notebook lay closed in front of me.
I thought about the rooms upstairs, the things stored behind their doors, and the years that had passed since Dale and I first moved into the farmhouse.
I had believed the hardest part of the weekend would be deciding whether to help Jeff.
I was beginning to understand that the house held more of our family history than I had allowed myself to remember.
And I wasn't sure I was ready to look at all of it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The First Morning With Jeff’s Children Brought Small Problems, Ordinary Kindness, and Questions I Had Avoided for Years
The Evening My Parents Came to Ask for Something They Had No Right to Assume I Would Give Them
Part 5 of 16
