Free Places in the Dark by Thomas H. Cook

returned to me. “Probably have to. I don’t know of any other old man who could afford to hire a live-in housekeeper. Not in times like these.”
    I put the report in a folder and shoved it in my desk. “She’ll find something else to do.”
    “Maybe so,” Doc Bradshaw said. He grabbed his knees and drew himself to his feet. “You ought to give her a call, Cal.”
    “Give who a call?”
    “That young woman who was taking care of Ed. You know, there’s not that many single women left in Port Alma.” He smiled slyly. “He who hesitates is lost.”
    Doc Bradshaw was right, of course, but I hesitated nonetheless. The following morning new cases were on my desk, people mistreating each other in the customary ways, mostly by breaching contracts involving money or the heart. Sheriff Pritchart came by to pick up Doc Bradshaw’s report. He asked if everything had appeared“normal” at Ed Dillard’s house. I told him that it had, and gave the whole incident no further thought.
    Then, two days later, the day after Christmas, I noticed a brief piece about Ed Dillard in the
Sentinel.
I knew Billy had written it, for it bore the mark of my brother’s style, the distinctive romantic wistfulness that also marked his mind. He wrote of the old man’s struggle against poverty, all he’d had to overcome, the devotion he’d shown during his wife’s long sickness, the fortitude with which he’d later borne his own ill fortune. “The grace of Ed Dillard’s life came to resemble the roses he tended in the garden beside his house,” my brother wrote, “all the more beautiful for thorns.”
    I visited my brother the following afternoon. For the last few years we’d made it our business to have lunch with our father each Sunday. After my mother left him, moved into the cottage on Fox Creek, he’d gone through a period of pronounced withdrawal. He’d briefly considered returning to the paper, then just as abruptly dropped the idea, deciding to act only as an “adviser.” This had meant little more than his depending upon his old friend, Sheriff Pritchart, to alert him about any newsworthy events in the county. For the rest, my father pretty much remained secluded in the house on Union Road, reading his cherished books and picking out the melody lines of the few pieces of sheet music my mother had left with the piano.
    On that particular Sunday, he’d seemed somewhat more animated, telling stories from his early days at the
Sentinel
, the past, as always, considerably more alive than the present, while the future seemed hardly to exist for him at all, a land across the river, still and windless, already locked in death.
    After lunch, we settled in my father’s parlor. It was a blustery day, with dark clouds rolling in from the north. Beyond the rattling windows, winds gusted suddenly, then settled no less abruptly, like horses whipped then brought to heel.
    My father handed out cigars, then took his place in the rocker beside the door. Billy leaned against the brick mantel, restless as ever, while I took my usual place on the leather sofa.
    My father took a quick draw on his cigar. “Anything new at the paper, William?”
    Billy shook his head, then slumped into the chair opposite me and folded one long leg over the other, bouncing his foot rhythmically, like someone keeping time to a song no one else could hear.
    “Well, there must be some news,” I said.
    “Not really. Things are pretty quiet.”
    My father turned to me. “And in the legal profession, what news?”
    “Not much there either.”
    “All right, then,” my father said. He drew a piece of paper from his back pocket. “Let’s begin Four Lines.”
    Four Lines was an idea my mother had come up with years before, when Billy and I were boys. After Sunday lunch, each member of the family had to recite four lines from some work of literature. Each recitation was to be carefully chosen for its beauty or its wisdom. Ideally it would reflect either our