Free Look Closely by Laura Caldwell

meantime.AndthentherewasTywithhisfreckles.
    “Can I keep my room at the hotel?” I asked.
    He made a face like he was thinking hard about it. “For you, I’l make it happen.”
    “Yeah?” I said, surprised to hear the coy tone of my voice.
    “Definitely.”
    “I’l be around,” I told him.
    6
    For the third time that day, I pul ed into Del a’s driveway, stil thinking about my lunch with Ty. Over lemonade, I had told him what I knew about my mom’s death, about the letter, and about my visit with Del a this morning. I hadn’t meant to spil the whole tale—
    it was so unlike me—but I was unusual y comfortable with him, and once I started talking, it was cathartic to get the story out.
    Ty had asked me if I’d spoken to my brother or sister. They would be obvious places to start, he said. Obvious, yes, but I had no idea where either of them were, a fact that had always gnawed at me, confused me. When I got up the nerve to ask my dad about either of my siblings, he became visibly upset, tel ing me that they had their own lives now. During col ege, I went through a period when I longed for companionship, for family, and I made a halfhearted attempt at finding them. I cal ed Information in different cities where I thought they might be.
    The Internet wasn’t widely used then, but I had a friend who was adept at computers do some digging. Neither of us could find a Caroline or Dan Sutter. And so I eventual y gave up.
    Ty thought I should cal my father right then and ask him, point-blank, what had happened and where my brother and sister were, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. Old habits weren’t easy to kil , and I stil abhorred the idea of distressing my father, of picking at old wounds.
    The last time I raised the issue was shortly after I met Maddy in law school. It was so weird, she had said over and over, that I didn’t know how my mom had died, that I didn’t know what had happened to my brother and sister.

    “I know ,” I’d said, irritated that I’d told her to begin with.
    But Maddy’s questions stayed with me, and so I brought up the topic a few weeks later on a Sunday afternoon. I was with my dad on his patio, sipping a glass of cabernet while he gril ed steaks for us.
    “Do you ever think about Mom?” I said, apropos of nothing.
    Hedroppedthegril tongshewasholding.They clattered on the stone patio tiles. He bent over to pick them up, and when he stood, he looked like a confusedoldmaninsteadofaconfidenttrial awyer. His face was slack.
    “Of course,” he said quietly, his gaze asking me how I could ask such a question.
    But stil I pushed. “Real y?” I said. “Do you real y?”
    “Yes, Hailey. I think about your mother al the time.” He blinked.
    “Wel , you never talk about her. You never talk about when she died.”
    A strange, garbled sound erupted from inside my father’s throat, making me stop my words. I could have sworn he was about to cry, something I had never seen, and I bailed.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. I stood and took the tongs from him. “Let me do that.”
    And, like an old man, he feebly handed them to me, wiping the grease from his hands on his immaculatekhakipantsbeforehewentintothehouse.
    I had never brought up the issue again. If I could find my own answers, without confronting the parent who raised me on his own, I wanted to do that.
    Which brought me back to Del a’s.
    “Sweetie!” Del a said when she opened the front door now, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder. “Come in, come in.”
    “Thanks.” I accepted a quick hug. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”
    “Not at al .” Del a led me into the kitchen, a large, green-painted room smel ing of garlic and crowded with plants, knickknacks and crocheted pot holders. It was the type of warm, homey kitchen I’d always hoped my father and I would have, one that was lived in, that was used to cook for a large family. My dad wasn’t much of a chef, though, and so although our homes were lovely and