By the following week, the house had settled into a routine.
Not the routine Dale and I had known before.
There were too many people for that.
But the children had stopped asking where everything belonged, and Jeff had begun moving through the kitchen without looking as though he needed permission to open a cupboard.
I took that as progress.
Brody was still quiet.
Kenzie spent more time with Hannah.
Cole continued to treat Pickles as though the fish depended entirely on him for survival.
Some things hadn't changed at all.
I was grateful for that.
My parents had not come back to discuss the farmhouse.
Mom hadn't called.
Dad hadn't stopped by.
I tried not to spend every day wondering what they were saying to each other.
It wasn't easy.
I had spent enough years learning to anticipate my mother's reactions that silence sometimes felt worse than an argument.
Still, I had made my decision.
I wasn't going to call her simply to make her feel better about it.
Jeff seemed to be thinking about the same things.
One evening, he stayed at the kitchen table after the children had gone upstairs.
I was putting away the last of the dishes when he asked whether I had a minute.
I dried my hands.
"Of course."
He looked toward the stairs.
Then he looked back at me.
"I want to show you what I found."
I stopped moving.
He had brought the object downstairs before, but he hadn't explained what it meant to him.
I had tried not to press him.
Now he seemed ready to talk.
I sat across from him.
Jeff went upstairs and returned with the object held carefully in both hands.
He placed it on the table.
I looked at it.
For a moment, I still couldn't make sense of what he wanted me to remember.
I knew only that he had found it in the back bedroom, behind things that had been stored there for years.
"Where exactly was it?"
He pointed toward the upstairs rooms.
"Behind the things near the wall."
I nodded.
Those rooms had been closed for a long time.
There were boxes and old belongings we had never found a reason to sort through.
I had assumed most of what remained was ordinary household clutter.
Jeff sat down.
"I didn't know whether I should bring it to you."
"You can show me anything you find in the house."
He looked uncomfortable.
"I know."
I waited.
He ran his fingers along the edge of the object.
"I just didn't want to start another argument."
That made me pause.
I had been so focused on my parents' request that I hadn't considered how much the disagreement might be weighing on him.
He was living in my home.
He knew our parents had wanted it back.
He probably worried that anything he did might be seen as taking sides.
"You're not responsible for the argument between me and Mom and Dad," I told him.
He looked up.
"I know you keep saying that."
"Because I mean it."
He nodded, though he still looked uncertain.
I leaned forward.
"Tell me what you remember."
He looked down at the object.
Then he began talking about the farmhouse as he remembered it when we were younger.
He remembered the rooms before Dale and I repaired them.
He remembered our parents moving things around.
He remembered the upstairs being used differently from the way we used it now.
His memories came in pieces.
Some were clear.
Others were little more than impressions.
I listened without correcting him.
We had grown up in the same house, but we hadn't experienced it in exactly the same way.
I had been thinking about repairs, bills, and the work of making a home.
Jeff had been thinking about the family that once lived there.
Neither of us was wrong.
We had simply carried different parts of the past.
When he finished, he sat quietly.
I wanted to ask him what the object meant.
I wanted to understand why he had looked so unsettled when he first brought it downstairs.
But I didn't want to turn his memories into an interrogation.
So I asked him something else.
"Does it bother you being here?"
He looked surprised.
"Here?"
"In the house."
He considered the question.
"Sometimes."
I nodded.
He explained that he was grateful for the place to stay, but he knew the arrangement had come out of a difficult conversation.
He didn't want his children to feel that they had caused trouble.
He didn't want Dale and Hannah to resent them.
And he didn't want me to regret letting them come.
I listened.
Then I told him the truth.
There would be adjustments.
There would be days when the house felt crowded.
There would be moments when somebody wanted quiet and somebody else wanted to talk.
That was what happened when people shared a home.
But I wasn't sorry I had opened the upstairs rooms.
I wasn't sorry the children were safe.
And I wasn't going to pretend I had made a mistake simply because our parents disagreed with me.
Jeff looked at the object again.
He seemed relieved by something in my answer, though I couldn't tell exactly what.
"I needed to hear that," he said.
I reached across the table and rested my hand beside his.
"You can ask me things, Jeff."
He nodded.
For a while, we sat without speaking.
The kitchen clock ticked above the doorway.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked as one of the children turned over in bed.
Jeff finally picked up the object.
"I'll keep it safe."
I watched him carry it upstairs.
This time, I didn't feel frustrated that he hadn't explained everything.
I felt that we had taken a small step toward being honest with each other.
It wasn't the kind of progress anybody could measure with receipts.
But it mattered.
Click here to continue reading: PART 14: My Mother Finally Had to Face the Choice I Had Made, and I Had to Stop Waiting for Her to Tell Me I Was Right
The Evening My Parents Came to Ask for Something They Had No Right to Assume I Would Give Them
Part 13 of 16
