The Inheritance I Had Not Earned
“Two thousand four hundred and eleven nights,” he said.
“Is that what it was?”
“Brooke counted, from the day he came home to the day he died. You woke an average of three times a night. That’s a little over seven thousand times you turned him in the dark.” He swallowed. “Sandy. I told you that you sat in a recliner. I said it in front of Joyce, and Pastor Dahl, and the kids. I said it was generous.”
“Keith.”
“No. Let me. I’ve been looking all morning for a way to say I’m sorry that doesn’t sound like a man trying to get out from under what he did, and there isn’t one. So I’ll say what’s true. For six years I called you every Sunday at six, and I did not see you.”
“I made sure you didn’t,” I said quietly. “I put that cardigan on him. I took the alarm off the bed. I made it look easy because Pop asked me to, and because I wanted you to have your Sundays.”
“I know. I read it.” He wiped his face at last with the back of his wrist. “Pop asked you to protect me, and you did it so well that I came out here for six years and congratulated myself on how well he looked. Like it was something he’d done. I never once asked what it cost the person who got him there.”
The wind moved my coat.
“There’s something worse,” he said. “I needed it to be small. I don’t think I knew that until about eleven o’clock this morning. After Dad’s stroke, a frightened part of me knew I was not going to be the one to do it. I had the job, and the kids, and an excuse for every one of those. So I told myself yours was a quiet life. Because if it was easy, I wasn’t a coward. If it was a recliner, I hadn’t left my sister alone in a burning house.” His voice cracked. “I needed you to have it easy so I could sleep at night. And all that time you were up at three o’clock, and I was sleeping.”
I would like to tell you I said something wise. What I did was step forward and put my arms around him. He stood stiff for a second, and then he folded over me, a big man bent down, and his whole body shook.
“I forgave you at the table,” I said into his shoulder. “I think before the words were out. I just didn’t know it until now.”
“I don’t deserve that.”
“Nobody does, Keith. That’s what it’s for.”
We sat on the porch most of an hour. Then Keith unfolded the yellow pad. At the top of the first sheet, in his neat engineer’s hand, was Estate Distribution: 60 / 40, underlined twice. He tore the page off along the perforation, folded it in quarters, and handed it to me.
“Throw that in the stove. I’d like to watch.”
He took out his pen and wrote it again on the next sheet, with the numbers reversed. 60 / 40. But the sixty was on my side. “You were right about the numbers, Sandy. I just had them on the wrong side of the line.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It came up out of me like a sneeze, and then he laughed too, a wet, cracked laugh, and the two of us sat on that porch like fools while my niece watched through the window.