The Heir (41 page)

My left hand was very limited in its motion by the cast on my shoulder. I held the frame in that hand and opened it with my right. Two pictures—a man and a woman in one, and two little boys in the other.

“Wow,” said one of the boys.

“It was . . . in . . . his bedroom,” said the other boy. “In the drawer . . . by . . . his bed.”

There they were, Melvin and Ann, the two people I most fully did not know. Beneath Ann’s sad, tranquil eyes, she knew that she would never know her sons, and they would never know her. She held something that was deeper and greater than just life. It was there in her eyes, obvious to anyone who was looking.

His eyes were unknowable. Did his young wife’s coming death harden him and build those walls that shrouded his soul? I’d only known him hard.

Eric had her eyes. That was our biggest difference in appearance, even now. When Eric smiled, he looked so much like this picture of her. I looked at him now, beside me, and then at his own image in the frame. There he was a bright, untroubled toddler, his heart already open and supple as it would be for his whole life. Here in the garden with me he was Ann, but without that sorrow.

I was much more like Melvin, but with greater sorrow. I knew my own face well enough to see the similarities. Heavier brow, eyes deeper set, and empty. In my own picture I was five years old and I had the weight of the world on my shoulders because I knew my mother was dying. I was formed by that sorrow and the sorrow of an unloving father, and it had left me so incomplete.

“Let me see,” Eric said. We held it together and absorbed every meaning we could pull from those faces. A cloud had obscured the sun, and I was shivering.

“Is there anything on the backs?”

I shook my head. “Don’t know.”

He took the frame and slid the glass off from the children’s side. It was tight. He had to force it, but he was still so careful. “There are papers behind the picture.”

Two folded sheets old enough to have yellowed a little. He teased one of them open.

“Eric,”
it said at the top in a handwriting I’d only seen a few times before.

“It’s from her?” Eric said, his eyes about popping out of his head.

“Read it,” I said.

“Eric

Oh my Eric, oh my Eric, your little heart filled with joy,
Time to sleep now, time to sleep now, oh my dear little boy.
Come back home now, come back home now, you’ve been following your star,
Time to rest now, time to rest now, from your wanderings far.
Will you miss me, will you miss me, will you remember this night?
Come now kiss me, time to sleep now, until the first morning light.
Who will hold you, who will love you, when years pass and
you’ve grown?
I am singing, I am praying, that you’ll never be alone.”

“She wrote it?” he said.

I nodded—I could hear her voice. “She sang it. . . . It was her . . . lullaby for you.”

“I don’t remember any of it. And I’m always alone.”

“Did she say anything about me?”
I’d asked Pamela.

“She asked me to look after you and Eric.”

“Have you been?”

“Every day.”

“No,” I said. “You . . . haven’t been. Open . . . that one.”

“Jason

Lay your tired head here on my shoulder,
Let me hold you in my arms my precious child,
You are growing, getting taller, getting older,
But I’ll still hold you in my arms a little while.

The weight of the whole world is on your shoulders,
In your arms you carry burdens much too hard,
Face a world of troubles, brave young soldier,
But precious Jason, sleep awhile in my arms.

Do questions weigh you down and make you wonder?
The world is hard and never gives you peace,
Lay your weary head here on my shoulder,
God will answer everything you seek.”

God knows all my answers.
“I’ve been praying for you boys every
day for twenty-five years,”
Pamela had said.
“I think you’re going to find
what you’re looking for.”

“Other . . . picture,” I said. Eric tore his attention from the papers and slid the glass off the other picture. At first I thought there was nothing, but there was. Another folded paper, not yellow, but instead clean white. There was only one person who could have written on it. I took it from Eric and opened it myself.

“Jason—”

I almost couldn’t read it. There were just a few sentences, but I was paralyzed. I couldn’t even breathe.

I tried again.

“Jason—

I am at the end. Tonight I will sign my will and I will not
return here.

There is no one else to turn to. You have the strength that I no
longer have. When everything is yours, you must destroy it all. You
will see what must be done, and no one else will understand. They
will fight you, but they will not stop you.

Now I understand why you are my son, so that there is
someone to right what I have done.

Eric—

Stand with your brother, whatever he does. Only you know
how.

My sons—

You are my only achievement and my only hope.”

And then, at the end,

“Jason, my son. I trust you and I am proud of you. You will
know what is right.”

It was too much and I was overwhelmed.

There was so much meaning in those words, and more in the words not there. There was no apology for what he knew he was doing to me, hardly even an acknowledgment of his own anguish. That he had left the note where I might never find it spoke much louder of despair than the words themselves.

But now I knew that I had been right. Melvin alone had known without question the truth of power and wealth, and he had answered my questions about them. I would never forget what I had learned.

If I’d found this note the first day, maybe I wouldn’t have lost Katie.

Eric was silent, working out his own understanding of these papers. Around us the light faded and the twilight deepened. All we knew was silence.

And in the silence, free of the babble of questions that had always torn at my mind and my thoughts, I knew that God had given me a life and a purpose.

I shivered in the growing dark, the paper in my hand that so perfectly expressed the man, my father, who’d written it—and that told me why I lived and what my purpose was. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.