Chapter 1 - THE LAST TIME HIS SON RAISED A HAND
Kevin Foster’s open palm struck his father before Thomas could finish saying the word “outside.”
The blow snapped Thomas’s head sideways. His shoulder crashed into the marble island, knocking the wooden spoon from his hand and sending the bowl of lemons rolling across the counter. His eyeglasses flew off, bounced once on the hardwood floor, and cracked beneath Kevin’s shoe.
For half a second, the bright white kitchen went silent.
Then Brenda exhaled cigarette smoke and said, “Go to the cemetery already, old man.”
Thomas gripped the island with both hands. At sixty-eight, his fingers were stiff from four decades of repairing engines in Dayton garages, but they still had enough strength to keep him upright.
His left cheek burned.
His lungs burned worse.
“I only asked her to smoke outside,” he managed.
Kevin stepped closer, his fitted black shirt stretched across his shoulders. “You’re in our way.”
“Your father can’t breathe,” Thomas said.
“Here comes the performance.”
Thomas reached into the pocket of his stained cooking apron and pulled out his gray inhaler. Before he could raise it, Kevin slapped his wrist down.
“Stop acting helpless.”
Thomas stared at his only son.
He remembered Kevin at seven years old, asleep on his chest after a fever. Kevin at sixteen, standing beside him beneath the hood of an old Buick. Kevin at twenty-three, crying because he could not afford his wedding.
Thomas had sold his restored pickup truck to pay for that wedding.
Now Kevin stood over him as though Thomas were something rotten that had been left too long in the kitchen.
Brenda tapped cigarette ash into a half-empty wine glass.
“He finally put you in your place,” she said.
Thomas slowly raised the inhaler again. This time Kevin let him use it.
One breath.
Then another.
His hands continued trembling, but something inside him became still.
“You should pick up those glasses,” Kevin said. “Someone could get hurt.”
Thomas looked down at the broken lenses near his shoes.
“Someone already did.”
Kevin rolled his eyes and walked toward the living room. Brenda followed, carrying her cigarette and wine as casually as if they had finished discussing the weather.
“Dinner better not be ruined,” she called back.
Thomas stood alone beside the stove.
The chicken continued roasting. The beans simmered quietly. Smoke from Brenda’s cigarette drifted through the doorway and hung beneath the ceiling.
Thomas turned off the burners.
He did not serve dinner.
Instead, he walked toward the narrow room at the back of the apartment. Kevin noticed and stepped into the hallway.
“Where are you going?”
Thomas kept moving.
Kevin reached for his shoulder, but Thomas pulled away sharply.
It was the first time in years he had physically resisted his son.
“Don’t touch me again.”
The quietness of his voice made Kevin pause.
Thomas entered the small back room and shut the door.
It had once been Joyce’s sewing room. After she died, Kevin and Brenda moved into the apartment “temporarily” to help Thomas adjust. Brenda took the master bedroom within a week. Kevin moved Thomas’s belongings into the back room by the end of the month.
That had been fifteen months ago.
Thomas sat on the narrow bed beneath a framed photograph of Joyce. In the picture, she was fifty-nine, laughing beside Lake Erie while the wind pulled strands of silver hair across her face.
“I kept my promise as long as I could,” he whispered.
He opened the wardrobe and moved a stack of blankets. Behind them sat a brown document box.
Inside were property deeds, rental agreements, tax records, bank statements, and one sealed envelope in Joyce’s handwriting.
Kevin believed Thomas lived on a small Social Security check.
He did not know Thomas owned the apartment.
He did not know about the two commercial buildings near downtown Dayton.
He did not know about the six-unit property outside Kettering or the small house near Yellow Springs.
Most importantly, Kevin did not know what Thomas had done with them three months earlier.
Thomas removed an old cellphone from beneath the papers and called Paula Jenkins, the notary whose business card had remained in his drawer since spring.
“Mr. Foster?” Paula answered.
“It’s Thomas.”
“Are you all right?”
He looked at the door. Brenda was laughing in the living room while Kevin turned up the television.
“No,” Thomas said. “But I’m ready now.”
“Ready for what we discussed?”
“Yes. Please bring the final copies.”
“I can be there in twenty minutes.”
Thomas ended the call and reached for Joyce’s envelope.
Before his fingers touched it, a sharp pressure closed around his chest.
He tried to inhale.
Nothing came.
The phone slipped from his hand.
Thomas collapsed beside the bed, striking the document box as he fell. Papers scattered across the floor.
From the living room, Brenda shouted, “What did the old man break now?”
Kevin did not answer.
Neither of them came to check.
Nineteen minutes later, Paula Jenkins knocked on the apartment door.
Brenda opened it with a cigarette between her fingers.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Thomas Foster.”
Brenda’s expression sharpened. “About what?”
“That’s private.”
Kevin appeared behind her. “My father isn’t feeling well.”
Paula glanced past them toward the back hallway.
“Thomas called me less than twenty minutes ago.”
Then she heard the faint electronic chirp of an inhaler alarm coming from behind the closed door.
Paula pushed past Brenda.
“Mr. Foster?”
Kevin caught her arm. “You can’t walk through our home.”
Paula looked directly at him.
“Take your hand off me.”
She pulled free, reached the back room, and opened the door.
Thomas lay motionless among the scattered deeds.
May you like
His broken glasses were still on the kitchen floor.
And on his face, beneath the harsh overhead light, was the clear red outline of his son’s hand.
