He Could Have Knocked

Clara read the sentence until it stopped being a sentence and became a place she could almost remember.

A cold afternoon. The library steps. Her sleeves stretched over her fingers.

Had she looked at him? Had she stepped around him without apology, sixteen and late for the bus?

The rest of the letter didn't answer.

Julian wrote that Matteo had told him to give Rebecca space after she left. He had obeyed at first out of anger, then out of a conviction that arriving without permission would make matters worse.

Rebecca and I made a mess of trying to be together. I told myself I could let her be happy without me. Then I used the same excuse about Clara, although she had never been asked what she wanted.

Clara lowered the page.

"At least he knew it was an excuse."

Lorenzo stood beside the open door.

"Yes."

"That doesn't make it better."

"No. It doesn't."

She looked at him sharply, ready for an argument he hadn't offered.

"You're not going to tell me he was protecting me?"

His gaze moved to the red coat.

"He should have knocked on your door."

Clara pressed her lips together. The relief of hearing it said aloud nearly undid her.

She stood and walked outside.

The morning had warmed. A bee moved drunkenly through the lavender beside the path. Somewhere in the main house, a window shut.

She had imagined family secrets as things that would become simpler once she knew them.

Instead she knew exactly enough to be furious with a dead man she had never met.

Lorenzo came out but stayed a few feet away.

"I need a minute," she said.

"Take it."

She took several.

When she returned, he had laid the letter flat on a clean cloth. He hadn't touched the other boxes.

Clara finished reading.

Julian had asked Matteo to give her his address if she ever asked about him. He acknowledged that this was another way of making someone else do what he should have done himself.

I don't expect forgiveness because I've finally managed to write the truth down. I wanted you to know I haven't forgotten her. I wish that were worth more than it is.

There was no grand statement about destiny. No account of an enemy standing between him and his daughter.

Just a man who had become good at living around a decision he regretted.

Clara folded the letter along its original creases.

"I used to think my father would recognize me in a crowd."

Lorenzo leaned against a worktable.

"When I was little," she continued. "I'd look at men on trains. I thought one of them might suddenly say my name."

He looked down.

"I'm sorry."

"You weren't the man on the train."

"No. But I was his brother."

She examined his face. "What happened between you?"

He pulled out the sketch of himself on the sofa.

"After Mother died, I stayed with my father. Julian refused to come back into the business. He came to the funeral, and they argued before the flowers had wilted."

"About Rebecca?"

"I didn't hear everything. I heard him accuse Father of thinking he owned other people's lives. I thought he was using our mother's death to settle an old argument."

"So you chose your father."

Lorenzo nodded.

"I answered Julian for a while. Then every conversation became the same. He said I didn't understand. I said he had left me to deal with everything. Eventually I stopped answering."

"Did he ever mention a daughter?"

"Not to me."

"Why?"

"I don't know, Clara. I could invent a reason that made us both look better. I won't."

She sat beside the portrait of Rebecca.

The angry part of her wanted someone alive to be entirely responsible. It would have been easier to demand something from Lorenzo than to stand before a grave.

But he had been thirteen when she was born. Twenty-six when his mother died. Young enough to make his own mistakes without being accountable for everyone else's.

"You should have answered him," she said.

"I know."

"And he should have come to me. Both can be true."

Lorenzo looked at her for a long moment.

"Yes."

They worked more slowly after that.

Clara chose three paintings to take to the cottage: Rebecca at the window, the harbor, and the little girl in the red coat.

She wasn't ready to hang the last one. She wanted it near her anyway.

Inside a folder of correspondence, they found an earlier letter from Eleanor to Julian. It discussed Rebecca's departure and urged him to come home for a conversation rather than another argument.

The last page mentioned records Eleanor and Rebecca had gathered about the accountant, Samuel Voss.

Matteo knows about the missing payments now. Rebecca has reason to be frightened, and I intend to make certain she can leave without being followed or pressured. When this is settled, none of you must use it as an excuse to delay speaking to one another again.

Lorenzo read that paragraph standing beside Clara.

"Did it get settled?" she asked.

"Voss was removed after she died. My father never explained the details to me. There should be records."

Clara looked at the date. Six weeks before the accident.

"Where?"

"My father's papers went to his attorney when he died. Some material had been moved from a bank box he maintained. I can ask the firm."

Clara brushed dust from her skirt.

"Then ask. I want to know what my mother was afraid of."

She picked up Rebecca's portrait, and Lorenzo lifted the heavier canvases.

For the first time, she carried something of her father out of the carriage house instead of leaving him among the dust.