He hung up and went out to the garage. He loaded his old toolbox into the back of his pickup, the one Dad gave him when he finished pharmacy school, and threw in his caulk gun and two tubes.
When he came back in for his coat, Dawn was standing in the hall with her church shoes still on.
Her face was washed. “I’m coming with you,” she said. “Give me five minutes.”
Lisa and I had driven out to the home place after the late service to eat leftover ham salad with Mom in her warm kitchen. The thermostat in the dining room said sixty-eight.
Mom had a cardigan over her apron, no coat. She kept touching the wall beside the stove like she didn’t quite believe it, and every time she did it Lisa caught my eye and smiled.
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About two o’clock we heard tires on the gravel. Lisa went to the window over the sink. “It’s Paul,” she said, and then, quieter, “Dawn’s with him.”
Paul got out first. He went around to the bed of the truck, lifted out his toolbox, and stood in the yard with it in his hand, looking up at the house like he had never really seen it before.
Dawn stayed in the passenger seat. Through the windshield I could see her sitting very straight, with an envelope in her lap and both hands flat on top of it.
Mom wiped her hands on her apron. She looked at me across the table, and I knew exactly what she was asking without her saying a word. Two sons. No war.
“I’m not going to say anything, Mom,” I said. “I promised you. I meant it then, and I mean it now.”
She nodded once, and she went to the door.
Paul came up the porch steps with the toolbox. He’s three years older than me and grayer, and he looked tired the way pharmacists look in flu season. He stopped in the doorway and felt the warm air.
“Mom,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you just tell me you were cold?”
“Because you’d have done exactly what you’re doing right now,” she said, “and you’d have felt bad about it. Come in, Paul. Shut the door. We heat this house now.”
He came in and set the toolbox down on the kitchen floor and just stood there.
Then he looked at me across the table. I waited for him to be angry that I hadn’t called him. I would have been.
“Gary,” he said. “Arlo called me after church. He says you boys did the attic. What’s left that I can do?”
I told him the truth. The north bedroom windows had sash cords so rotten the plastic wouldn’t hold right.
The cellar door had a gap you could slide a hymnal under. And the walls, for another day.
“Then I’ll do the north windows,” he said, “and you’ll show me that cellar door.”
He took his coat off and hung it over a kitchen chair, and then he turned to Mom.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I should have come out more. I should have looked. I stand behind that counter all day asking strangers how they feel, and I never once looked at you.”
Mom took his face in both her hands, the way she did when we were boys, and said, “You’re here now. Go caulk something.”
We worked about an hour, Paul and me, the way we used to work cattle for Dad, without much talking.