The Villa My Father Gave Away

The house was full. My living room was full of people in church clothes holding paper plates, and my kitchen was full of casseroles, and the sheet cake with Home Sweet Home in blue icing sat on my dining table on one of Perry’s mother’s lace cloths. The pastor of First Baptist was there, a gray-haired man with kind eyes who had buried Perry. Four men from the VFW stood in a cluster by the piano with their caps in their hands. Terry’s regional manager and his wife stood beside the fireplace, smiling at everything. Mindy, in a white dress, was laughing at something a neighbor said with her hand on her chest.

My father stood in the middle of the room with a glass of sweet tea raised.

“I’d like to say a word,” he said, “before we eat.”

People hushed. Colleen dabbed at her eyes.

“I’m not a man for speeches. But a father’s job is to take care of his girls. I’ve got one who’s done well, off serving her country, God bless her, and I’ve got one who needed a place to raise her boys. A family takes care of its own.” He lifted the glass higher. “So to my girls, and to the one who finally understood that family comes first. Welcome home, Mindy. Welcome home, Nolans.”

Sixty people raised their glasses.

I stepped through the open door.

I did not announce myself. I did not clear my throat. I walked in through my own French doors in my own dress blues, with a sheriff behind me and a property manager at my elbow, and the sound of the hymn on the speaker filled the room until Sheriff Sid took off his hat.

Hats come off at funerals and in churches and when a man wants a room to know that what comes next is serious. Everyone in Greeley Falls knows that gesture. It is the same one he used at Perry’s grave.

The room turned, one person at a time, like wheat in a wind.

My father lowered his glass. The sweet tea shook in it. For a moment his mouth was still shaped around a word, and then it closed, and I watched Rex Osgood, a man who had never in his life been without an answer, stand in the middle of my living room with nothing ready to say.

“Rex,” Sheriff Sid said, in the voice of a man asking about the weather. “Whose house is this?”

My father found his smile again. It took him a few seconds. “Sid. Good of you to come. It’s Mindy and Terry’s. Family house. Come in, have some cake.”

“I asked whose house,” Sid said. “Not who lives in it.”

“It was Leah’s.” He laughed, a dry little laugh, and looked around for help that was not there. “She gave it up. Family matter, Sheriff. We settled it a week ago.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She didn’t have to. She’s a Navy girl. She knows duty.”

Somebody near the piano coughed. The commander of the VFW post, a stooped man I had known since pigtails, had stepped forward a half pace, cap against his chest, and his eyes were on my father’s face.

“Mr. Osgood,” Jodi said. She does not raise her voice either. “I’m the authorized agent for the owner of this property, and I have managed it for four years. Last Saturday at nine in the morning I handed you a written notice at the front door, in front of a witness. It said you had no permission to be here and that you were to leave by five o’clock yesterday. You tore it in half. Your wife signed the certified copy. I have the receipt here.”