Free The Half Brother by Holly Lecraw Page A

the one with the pool.”
    It had been a sagging above-ground pool. “That was pretty spiffy,” I said. “I think I’ll keep looking, though.”
    What I didn’t say was that I wasn’t sure I should stay in Abbottsford at all, even though my mother was in favor of the house plan. “You’ll have room for us to visit,” she said. “You seem happy, Charlie. You seem to have nice friends. Don’t come back here on our account. I’ll take care of Big Hugh and Bobo. Nicky’s fine. He’s fine.”
    But I was looking for signs and portents. If there was no house, my way would be clear: I wasn’t meant to stay; Abbott had been a way station.
    Angela was going through papers in the car. Then she got out and came and sat on the bench with us. The dairy bar was close to the road, and cars whooshed by. “There’s one last place,” she said. “It’s way too big for you. And it needs a ton of work. But who knows,” and her face settled into the vatic calm that I have since learned is the special province of talented real estate agents.
    “It’ll be dark soon,” I said. Behind us, they’d put out the Closed sign.
    “Well, it’s not much farther. And it’s empty. The owner died.”
    “He died ?” Zack said.
    “A while ago. Don’t worry, sweetie. He was very old. He was ninety-two,” she said to me. “It’s been in the same family for a zillion years.” Yeahs .
    We left the dairy bar and drove another couple of miles. The sun was lowering fast. The landscape grew hillier, hovering in anticipation. Finally we made a left turn, west off the highway. At first it was just another road, with more ranch houses, but then the suburban feel died away along with the pavement, the road narrowed, and then there on the right was the last big aluminum mailbox, with the smaller plastic newspaper box beneath. No house was visible from the road. “Hmm. Mysterious. What do you think, Zack?” I said.
    No answer.
    The gravel driveway bumped slightly downhill through thick trees, where it was already dusk. We rattled along the ruts for a minute or so and then the driveway flattened and we shot into open pasture; an eighth-mile ahead of us, on a little hill, silhouetted against the sunset,was the house, long and white. On its hill, although there were low, gnarled apple trees to the side and in back, the house was completely exposed. The tree branches, still bare, were black against the sky, rose fading to deep blue, stars already appearing.
    It was a clapboard farmhouse, Federalish, with tall windows and a porch with columns, a thoroughly New England mishmash that, even so, struck me as a little southern. The house looked like a true destination. A place you’d be relieved, over and over, to reach. We pulled into the half circle of pea gravel by the front steps and got out. Zack stood close to me. I said, once again, “What do you think?” and this time he nodded. He climbed the steps with me, and we looked around at the porch and then turned to face the woods, the meadow beyond. “I think maybe you’re right,” I said. “I think maybe this is the one.”
    Eventually I realized what my earlier misgivings about owning a house had been: that somehow I did not deserve certainty. For years afterward, as I drove down the driveway, I’d sometimes let myself imagine that the house wasn’t really there, that I’d made it up. Then I’d turn the last corner out of the overarching trees, and there it was. In its sudden space of air and light.
    THE LETTERS WEREN’T FREQUENT but they were regular. She sometimes wrote in purple pen. They were often fat letters. When one arrived in my box I would let it sit for a while. An hour or so. I’d look at it and hold it. Then finally open it.
    They were always chatty, sometimes a little coy. Perky as the minutes of a student-council meeting, and I would think, Just stop . She would mention parties and dances but not boys. She signed them Yours . Maybe she meant to be old-fashioned, or