Dad came in through the front door and stopped dead.
I watched him take it all in. Jeff’s tire tracks pressed into the yard. The empty spot in the front room where his treadmill used to be. The woman’s coat hanging on the hook by the door.
Then he looked down the short hallway. At the front bedroom door, standing open.
At my mother, standing in it.
“Hello, Dennis,” she said.
He didn’t say anything for a long time.
He looked old, standing there. I hadn’t noticed it happening, but it had happened. His shoulders had come forward. His hair had gone white all the way through. His big foundry hands were hanging at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them.
“What is this?” he said.
He was asking me. Not her.
“Mom’s lease is up on the thirty-first,” I said. “She retires at Christmas. She paid half of this house. She’s moving into the room she paid for.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Dad, the deed has two names on it. Neither one of them is yours. You don’t have a lease. You’ve never paid a dollar of rent. Mom and I get to say who lives here.”
I said it quietly. I’d decided in the truck that morning that I wouldn’t raise my voice no matter what he said. And I didn’t.
“Where am I supposed to put Tammy’s boys?” he said.
“That was always the question, Dad. You just never asked it out loud.”
He turned and looked at Mom.
She still had a coat hanger in her hand. She didn’t look away from him. But she didn’t look hard at him either. She looked at him the way you’d look at a dog that had gotten out and come home all muddy.
“You’re welcome to stay, Dennis,” she said. “Nobody’s putting you out. You’ll have the back bedroom like you’ve always had. I’ll have this one. We’ll work out the kitchen.”
“Linda, Tammy is coming at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Then you’ve got tonight to call her,” I said.
He stood there a minute longer.
Then he walked through the kitchen, right past me, without a word. Out the back door. He sat down on the back step next to Amy.
She moved her tea glass so he’d have room.
I watched through the kitchen window. He sat out there until it got dark. He didn’t take his phone out of his pocket one single time.
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