The Words He Hid
Part 1 - The Yellow Suitcase
“If he won't get in the car, leave the suitcase on the porch. He'll follow it.”
My brother said that about our father while Dad sat three feet away, holding a little blue book against his chest.
I had driven ninety miles because Grant told me the housekeeper was stealing from him. I arrived to find a yellow suitcase beside Dad's chair and the front door standing open.
Dad was eighty-one. His hand trembled when he buttoned a shirt, but there was nothing uncertain about the way he looked at me.
“Don't let him take my book, Beth.”
Not my house. Not my money.
My book.
I put my purse down.
“Where is he supposed to be going?”
“We discussed this.” Grant tapped a folder against his leg. “The trial stay. Maple Glen. He agreed.”
“You told me someone was taking his money.”
“She is.”
He pointed at the woman near the hallway. Maribel had a cloth bag over her shoulder. She was thirty-two, with dark hair pinned badly at the back and eyes swollen from crying.
I knew her from Christmas. She had brought tamales and refused to let Dad stand at the sink afterward. He had talked about her children as though they lived next door instead of across town.
Now she stood like someone waiting to be searched.
“Eight hundred dollars a month,” Grant said. “On top of what we pay her to clean. Since January.”
It was August.
I looked at her. “For what?”
“Ask your father.”
“I am asking you.”
Dad tightened his arms around the blue book.
“Beth.”
I turned back. He shook his head once.
Behind his chair, the wall had pale rectangles where family photographs used to hang. One of my mother's ceramic birds lay in a carton marked KITCHEN.
Mom had been dead for fourteen months. Dad still set her bird beside the sink every morning, facing the garden.
“Who packed these?” I asked.
“I hired someone,” Grant said. “You have no idea how much there is to do when you're the only one nearby.”
That was true. He lived twelve minutes away. I taught art at a community center two counties over. I called Dad every Sunday and visited twice a month, and I had let myself believe those things added up to enough.
Guilt made me look at the folder instead of my brother.
“What did he agree to?”
“A short stay while we sort things out.”
“Then why are the pictures packed?”
Grant sighed.
“Because eventually we have to be realistic.”
Dad tried to stand. I reached for him, but he steadied himself on the chair arm.
“I asked you to fix the upstairs bathroom,” he told Grant. “I didn't ask you to pack my wife's birds.”
“We talked about the stairs. You signed the papers.”
Dad looked down at the book.
I had never seen it before. The corners were soft and white. A picture of two people covered most of the front. There was a yellow sticky note between the pages.
Maribel stepped forward.
“He wants to stay here.”
“Of course you want that,” Grant said. “The payments stop if he leaves.”
I felt a hot, ugly suspicion rise in me. Dad had always hated being alone. Mom had managed the household accounts, the appointment calendar, even the birthday cards. Without her, he might have mistaken attention for affection.
“Maribel, can you show us what the money was for?”
“Yes.”
But she looked at Dad before reaching into her bag.
He whispered, “Please don't.”
Grant held out his hand for the book.
“Give me that. We're late.”
Dad pulled it away so quickly the sticky note fell onto the rug.
I picked it up.
Three words had been written in thick black marker.
I choose home.
Underneath, in smaller letters, the same sentence appeared six times. Some letters leaned backward. One line had been rubbed out so hard the paper was thin.
I touched Dad's shoulder.
“Who wrote this?”
He stared at my hand as though he expected me to take it away.
“I did.”
Grant opened his folder and dropped a page onto Dad's lap.
“This is what you chose. Your signature is right there.”
Dad studied the page. He moved his eyes across the first line, stopped, and started again.
Then he looked up at me, tears caught in the folds beneath his eyes.
“Beth,” he said, “will you tell me what it actually says?”
