“How are you feeling? You haven’t been responding to any of my phone calls, texts, or emails.”
He waved a hand, going back to polishing. “You know how things get around here. I’m fit as a fiddle with a clean bill of health. I told you it was nothing to worry about.”
Again, I eyed the silver. You don’t take silver down to the quarters. You don’t move it from its spot, period. You shine it where it is.
“You’re doing better? Really?”
He smiled. “Would I lie?”
Woodson Hale was the most stringent, rule-abiding person I’d ever known. If he saw a servant so much as move a piece of silver to the left, that servant would get a talking-to. My uncle wouldn’t sit with a pile of it for no reason.
“You can tell me, Uncle,” I said softly. “I’m not a child anymore.”
He set down the silverware. “With you gone we’ve had to make some concessions. It would take too long to go around and polish these. Much faster to do it all at once.”
Guilt slammed into my chest. “I’ve missed you.”
He picked up the chalice. “Missing me one place?”
“Search another…”
He smiled softly. “Walt Whitman. Do you remember when I first read that to you?”
“The anniversary of Mom’s death.”
Some people were sung lullabies or read bedtime stories, my uncle read me poetry. I was a little too old for bedtime stories anyway, but I never got bedtime stories, and Uncle always said with poetry, for a moment, you could fix the unfixable.
There were so many things in my life that needed fixing.
“I might have time in my schedule for a poetry reading.” He winked. “After this engagement dies down. I do miss your poetry, Story,” he added, eyes bright, waiting.
The Crowne phone buzzed on the wall and saved me from answering. Still I watched him a moment longer. It had been so long since we’d done a poetry reading. Since we’d just sat and talked.
I paused as I was about to exit. In the corner of his room was a toppling mountain of shoes, what looked like Grayson Crowne’s sneakers. The ones he wore once and then never again.
“What are these?”
Uncle was too busy on the phone, but I looked closer. They were labeled donations. Why did Grayson Crowne always act like he cared the least, when he cared the most?
I gently shut the door behind me as I left.
Abigail’s engagement party was starting soon. I had no idea if Grayson was going to want me there. For every event since the vacation, he’d had me stay in his room. Still, I hurried.
You can write while taking care of him.
Grayson’s words echoed in my head as I walked back to his wing. It was getting late, the light waning in long, gaunt shadows along Crowne Hall.
I could. I can write anywhere. But every time I put pen to paper, I froze. I’ve hidden for so long I didn’t know how to show my soul.
What if people see me, and they don’t like what they see?
When I got back to Grayson’s wing, shouting stopped me short in the hallway.
“One fucking thing, Mom,” Grayson’s voice bounced off the walls.
I paused a few feet down from the door to Grayson’s bedroom, his yelling echoing in the barren halls.
“Grayson, dear,” Tansy Crowne’s tinkling voice drifted like a breath of winter wind. “You know how these things work.”