The Rent Book in the Frame

My brother

Cody found me by the sliding glass door. He was still in his ball cap and gray work shirt, because he’d been called in that morning to fix a combine for a farmer north of town who couldn’t wait until Monday with beans still in the field.

“Meggie,” he said, and he hugged me with one arm, careful of my cake. “You came. I wasn’t sure you would. Mom said you’ve been kind of off lately. She said you were moving out.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said, “It’s a nice house, Cody. It really is.”

“It’s a good house,” he said, looking around at it like he still couldn’t believe it was his.

“Good bones. New furnace. I keep walking around at night just putting my hand on the walls. Kayla thinks I’ve lost my mind.”

He showed me the nursery. It was the soft yellow. There was a crib already set up in the corner, still with the tags on the mattress, and a rocking chair Kayla’s dad had refinished.

Present time

I meant for him to open it later. I want that on the record. That’s what the card said, and I meant every word of it.

But around four o’clock Kayla’s mother clapped her hands and said it was present time. Folks gathered in the living room with their paper plates.

Kayla sat on the new couch, and Cody stood next to her, and they went through the toaster and the throw pillows and the gift cards to the farm store.

Mine was near the bottom of the pile. Cody picked it up and turned it over and read the outside of the card out loud. “To Cody, from Meg.”

Then he opened the card and read the inside, and he laughed. “Open this when everybody’s gone home,” he read. “What is it, Meg? Something I’m going to be embarrassed about?”

People laughed. I smiled and said, “Just wait on that one, Cody. Really. Set it aside.”

And Mom, from across the room, holding her paper plate with a corner piece of cake on it, said, “Oh, go on and open it, Cody. Everybody wants to see.”