I never really knew my grandfather. He and my father stopped speaking before I was even born — some quarrel neither of them would name, passed down to me only as silence at the holiday table, a name nobody quite finished saying.
Last week, out of nowhere, his housekeeper called on his behalf. He asked me to come to the house. He didn't say why.
I'm not sure what I'm walking into. But I'm going.
The gates are taller than I pictured them. Somewhere past the hedges, a house I have never once set foot in has been standing my whole life, waiting for a visit that never came.
A groundskeeper lets me in without a word, as if he'd been told exactly when to expect me. The hall smells of cedar, old paper, and something faintly like cigar smoke. At the end of it, a door stands open.
My grandfather is by the window. He turns when he hears me, and for a moment neither of us says anything at all.