“How was Dad?” Noah motioned to the bedroom door.
“He hasn’t heard any of this. He told the doctor to tell me, said he didn’t want to know. I wish we hadn’t gone. I just thought maybe there was something they could do.” She began to tear up.
Noah sat down. “Hey, they gave you prescriptions for the pain, that’s something at least. It’s good you took him. He should have gone sooner. Listen, we knew, like you said. You seem surprised.”
“I’m not surprised, Noah. I’m sad. My father — our father — he’s dying. We should be sad. I should be allowed to cry.”
Noah put his arm around her shoulders.
Soon she gathered herself. She asked for a glass of water, which Noah poured and brought her. She drank it all at once. She wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt. “I only got him to go because he wanted to see the old house.”
“In Duluth? The house on High Street?”
She nodded. “We went first thing, before the hospital. We were sitting there idling in front of it. The man who lived there, who must have lived there, was cleaning his gutters. He was up on a ladder. Dad just stared out the window. God, it was weird. It looked the same, just exactly the same. I felt ten years old again.” She handed Noah the glass as if to ask for more water. Again he filled it and brought it to her.
“After five minutes Dad said, ‘Okay.’ Halfway to the hospital he said, just out of the blue he said, ‘A lot of times I couldn’t remember what our house looked like. Not lately, I mean when I was gone, out on the Lakes. I’d try to picture it but couldn’t. I should have taken that for a bad sign.’
“God, it was sad, Noah. I told him how I used to wait for him to get home. I’d sit in the window in the living room and watch the harbor entrance.”
“I’d do the same thing. Before the wreck.” Noah paused. “Maybe we were waiting for two different people.”
Solveig looked at him. “He loved us the same before and after. He just didn’t know how to feel about himself.”
“It’s not so simple,” Noah said.
“What’s not simple?”
“There’s a long list of things that aren’t simple about it.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I could use a drink.”
“There’s nothing here. Amazing but true.”
“It’s not amazing, Noah.”
“He told me about quitting. He should have had his epiphany about twenty years earlier. Things might have been different.” Even as he spoke he realized that the rancor was all but gone. “But better late than never, I guess.”
“That’s just what I was going to say.”
They talked long into the night and were exhausted in the end. At midnight they turned in, Noah to a sleep absent of rest.
“YOU BAKING A pie?” Noah said, one eye closed, the other squinting at the dull shimmer of the kitchen light.
“You could say that,” Olaf said.
There were eight or ten Mason jars sitting on the kitchen counter, each fuzzy with freezer burn. Olaf had two more under his arm. He was already dressed.
“Seriously, what is all that?”
Olaf set the last jars on the counter. “This is for you and your sister.”
Noah had rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He stood and stretched. He yawned. He walked to the counter, picked up one of the jars, and held it to the light.
Olaf took it from him and put it back on the counter. “Wait until your sister gets up.”
Noah’s jeans hung on the chair. He hiked them on and sat back down. “Want to tell me about the trip to Duluth yesterday?”
Olaf rearranged the jars into neat rows on the counter. “Your sister didn’t tell you about it?”
“She told me some.”
“I went for her.”
“Those prescriptions they gave you, are they making any difference?”
“Will you grab that box and put it on the coffee table?” Olaf said, pointing at a wooden whiskey crate.
Noah picked it up and moved it to the table. “The prescriptions?”
“I didn’t take them.”
“Of course not.”
Olaf finally sat down on the sofa. “Solveig drove me by the old house,” he said.
“She told me.”
“It’s a nice house. Someone’s taking care of it.”
“I give up, Dad.”
“You give up?”
“The doctor, the prescriptions, everything.”
Olaf smiled. “You promise?”
Together they reminisced about the old house. Memories like photographs. Olaf told Noah about the night of his birth, Noah in turn about his forays into the old man’s office and how he’d pretend to be his father while the elder sailed the Great Lakes. After the sun rose Solveig emerged from her bedroom.
“What’s all this?” Solveig asked.
“Noah,” Olaf said, “there’s a box on the dresser in my room. Would you grab it for me?”
Noah did. He placed it before his father.
“This,” Olaf said, making a wide gesture that encompassed the room, the jars on the counter, the two boxes on the table, the house in general, “this stuff all belongs to you two. We have some business to take care of.” He unscrewed a Mason jar. “This is your inheritance,” he said, pulling a block of frozen hundred-dollar bills from the jar. “Round about two hundred thousand dollars. You split it. On top of that, there’s another fifty grand, plus or minus, in the bank. This is all in a file marked ‘Lake Superior Savings and Loan.’ The bank is in Gunflint. You’re both on the account.”
“Jesus, Dad,” Noah said, looking at Solveig, whose face was frozen in shock. “That’s an awful lot of cash to have in the freezer.”
Olaf nodded as if in agreement. “A lifetime of savings,” he said. “I don’t know how it works in terms of claiming the inheritance — tax-wise, I mean — but you two can figure it out. You’re both beneficiaries on a small life insurance policy, too. By small I mean small, probably not worth a bag of bread crumbs.” He furnished another file marked “Life Insurance Policy.”
“Aside from the cash, all I have is the house and the land. People say property values up here are booming, but I have no idea what it’s worth. Anyway, don’t sell it. Your grandpa built this house and it belongs in the family.”
“Slow down a minute,” Noah said. He stood up, looked at the Mason jars lining the counter. He counted them. There were ten. “Hold on.”
“Dad,” Solveig said, her voice uncertain, “this is all very surprising.”
Olaf looked back and forth between them. “What? I’m executing my will. This is something we have to do. Bear up, will you?”
Solveig buried her face in her hands. Noah stood in the middle of the room, equidistant from the two of them. He felt his pulse quickening.
“Sit down, would you, Noah? And stop moping, Solveig. You’ve moped enough, there’s no need for it.”
Solveig persisted. Noah could not move.
“Please,” Olaf said without kindness, “sit down.”
Noah stepped to the chair and sat down beside Solveig.
Olaf cleared his throat. “Listen, you two, there are things you need to know about. Business, all right?” Without waiting for a reply he continued, “This is the deed for the house. Taxes are paid through next year. They were twenty-eight hundred dollars this year. I’m putting all this information in a file labeled ‘Estate.’ ” He held up a brown accordion file, then tied it shut.