Page 52 of We Are Okay

I opened his doors for the first time.

Here I was, in his study. In the fifteen years I’d lived there, I’d never stepped inside. One wall was lined with shelves and on the shelves were boxes and boxes of letters. Hands shaking, I reached for one. The envelope was addressed to his PO box. The handwriting was his own.

I unfolded the paper.

Daddy, it said.The mountains look beautiful today. When are you going to visit me? Just for a little while? Marin has school and her own friends. You can leave her for a couple weeks.I stopped reading. I turned to the letter behind it. Addressed to Claire Delaney, Colorado, no stamp, never sent. I pulled out the paper.You know I can’t do that. Not yet. But soon. Soon.I grabbed another box of letters. They were all from him to her, or from her to him. They were all in his handwriting. They dated back so many years. I was trying to read, but my vision kept blurring.

I heard faraway sirens. I left his study and walked into his bedroom.

It smelled like cigarettes and tea. It smelled like him. His bed was made and everything was tidy. It struck me for the first time, how wrong it was that I’d never seen it. How wrong to have been shut out. The door to his closet wasopen, all of his sweaters folded with precision. I opened a dresser drawer to the shirts I’d washed and folded for him a couple days before. I opened a smaller drawer and saw his stacks of handkerchiefs. I knew I was looking for something, but I didn’t know what.

The sirens were getting louder.And then I saw it. A worn velvet armchair, sitting against a door.

I pushed the chair away.

I turned the knob.

It was a small space, somewhere between a room and a closet, and it was dark until I saw the chain dangling from the ceiling and pulled it, and light shone across all of my mother’s things. They were preserved as if for a museum in clear bags with cedar blocks, labeledSHIRTS, PANTSAND SHORTS, UNDERGARMENTS AND SWIMWEAR, DRESSES, SHOES. SCHOOL PAPERS, NOTES AND LETTERS, POSTERS AND SOUVENIRS, BOOKS AND MAGAZINES.Photographs of her covered the expanse of one wall. Every square inch, all these images he never showed me. She was a little girl in ruffles, a teenager in ripped jeans, a young woman in bathing suits and wet suits, a young mother holding a baby—holdingme.

The sirens stopped. There was a pounding at the door.

“Police!” they yelled.

In every picture, my mother was a stranger. I didn’t know where Gramps was, but I knew I could never see him again. Never.

There must have been a crash as the front door burst open.

There must have been footsteps, coming toward me.

They must have been calling for anyone who was home.

But nobody hurried me as I took it all in. Nobody said anything as I turned back to the clothing, took the bag markedDRESSES,and unzipped it, just to be sure, and found the deep green fabric. It unfurled like it did that day he held it up for me and didn’t let me touch it.

I let it drop to the floor. I turned around.

Two police officers stood watching me.

“Are you Marin Delaney?”

I nodded.

“We got a call saying you needed help.”

My body was heavy with longing, my heart—for the first time—full of hate.

They were waiting for me to say something.

“Take me away from here,” I said.

“We’ll go over to the station,” one of the cops told me.

“Sure you don’t want to grab a sweater?” the other one asked.

I shook my head.

“Sorry about this,” he said as I climbed into the backseat behind a metal grate. “It’s a quick ride.”

They sat me in a chair in an office. They brought me aglass of water and then another. They left me alone and then came back.