Placing the picture back in the box, I turned my head toward Sadie. “I’m sorry you don’t know who your father is.”
“Thanks, but you can’t miss what you never had,” she said, the corners of her smile downturned.
“True. So, tell me what I’m going to find in the rest of these totes.”
The sunlight of late afternoon was swallowed up by the darkness of night as it snuck in. The light over the table was the only illumination in the room as we went through the last box. It was cardboard, worn and weathered.
“This is the only one I didn’t go through completely yet. Emotionally, I could only handle one a week or so. But just from opening the lid and finding the baby things, I knew it wasn’t a box meant for me.”
Folding back the lid, a musty scent overwhelmed my senses. As Sadie had mentioned, a few baby items rested on top, but what surprised us both were the newspaper articles about me when I accepted the hockey scholarship in college and following my career. We could tell that it hadn’t been touched in years, but somebody had added to its contents.
“Do you think she knew?” I asked Sadie, who had earlier said that her mother had never mentioned having another child.
“Maybe. You bear a striking resemblance to our grandfather. If she wasn’t certain, maybe she hoped that it was you. It maybe gave her hope that she had done the right thing by giving you up.”
“Yeah,” I said with a choked back cry.
“How about I give you a minute? I’ll grab us a beer from the fridge in the garage.”
Nodding my thanks, I crumbled onto the table and let the knowledge of what I’d spent the last three hours delving through wash through me. It was. . .overwhelming.
Minutes passed before I worked up the courage to lift my head, shoving the bottoms of my palms into my eye sockets to wipe them clean. I looked over and found Sadie sitting in a chair, quietly sipping on her beer.
“I brought you two. Figured you may need it.”
Grabbing the still ice-cold bottle, I downed the first in four hearty gulps, then shoved my hand over my mouth as I belched loudly. “Sorry. Er, thanks for this.”
“You’re welcome. So, if you want to stay the night, I have a spare room and a fridge full of beer.”
“I’m not going to ask how you were able to get the beer.”
“Wow, turning into a big brother already?” she joked. “I have a fake ID, but I rarely get carded because of my height. People just assume I’m older.”
“Well, I won’t give you too hard of a time since I’m benefiting from it. And thanks for the room offer. I’ll take you up on it.”
“If you want to put something on the television, I can order us a pizza and make the bed up for you.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can sleep wherever.”
“No, let me do this. Please,” she pleaded as she stood from the table. Before a second passed, she wrapped her arms around my neck and I found myself returning her embrace.
“I always wanted a sibling.”
Patting the back of her arm, I added, “Me too, kid. Me too.”
I watched as she skipped away to a room down the hall and then I made my way to the living room with a flatscreen hoisted above the fireplace.
By default, I landed on a hockey game. It was the local pro hockey team out of Tennessee and at that moment, an idea popped into my head of taking both Autumn and Sadie to a game sounded like a great way to spend a night.
“Hockey?” Sadie asked ten minutes later as she plopped her body onto the recliner across from me.
“Well, it is my favorite thing to watch.”
Groaning, she dramatically tossed her head back. “Ugh, I guess I’m going to need to learn all about it, aren’t I?”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
The pizza arrived shortly after and it surprised me that Sadie and I both loved a fully loaded pie, but it didn’t come close to the delicious concoction I had eaten with Autumn on our first date. It was a good substitute, though.
While eating the pizza, we lounged back and I explained the game on the screen. Sadie tried to grasp what was going on, but hockey and her didn’t seem to mix. But it was clear she was trying to understand.
I felt a buzzing in my back pocket and I knew it was Autumn messaging me. Timidly, I pulled the phone out and read the message on the screen.
Autumn: Inspector came by today. He noted a few things and told your contractor. Will be back on Monday for final.
There was no warm greeting. No “Hey, I miss you.” Nothing like our earlier messages. Instead, it felt more cold, impersonal. And I knew it was my fault. I’d been the one that was distant. In the last few days, I’d taken longer and longer to reply to her messages. I was an hour away from the woman that had thrown me for a loop and I was too chickenshit to do anything about it.
“That your girlfriend?”
Shaking my head, I shoved the phone back into my pocket. “Just finding out the inspector wants a few changes to my house in Ashfield.”
“Kind of late for an inspector to reach out.”
“It was my contractor.”
Sadie pulled her gaze away from the television and bore it down on me. She may have been my little sister, but right now she made me feel like I was two feet tall.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a shit liar?”
