“I am your nephew,” Philip said. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, sir. I have taken the liberty of bringing my wife with me. Emily.”
“What a cozy place you have here, Uncle Matthew,” she said. “May I call you that? I can smell wood. It is a lovely smell. Do you work here too?”
“I do,” Matthew said while his nephew stood beside her, looking both awkward and tongue-tied. “I can show you my workroom, if you wish, while the kettle is boiling.”
“I would love to see it,” she said.
He showed them his workbench and his tools and a half-finished rocking chair he was making for the elderly mother-in-law of a farmer who would need it by the end of next month, when she would be coming to live permanently with him and his wife. He showed them the shelves with his wood carvings, and they spent some time admiring them.
“My father says you were forever whittling pieces of wood when you were a boy and making a mess to arouse Grandmama and Grandpapa’s wrath,” Philip said. “He says you did not show much talent in those days.”
“I did not,” Matthew admitted.
“Oh, Phil,” Emily cried as her attention focused upon one particular carving. “Look at this. Have you ever seen anything more exquisite?”
It was a carving of two spindly-legged lambs pressed to the side of their woolly mother. Matthew had carved it after watching the lambs being born at David and Doris Cox’s farm not far fromthe village in the springtime two years ago. It was one of his favorite pieces, though everything he carved and kept was his favorite piece when he made it. He would not allow himself to keep anything he did not believe at the time to be at least equal to the best thing he had ever done.
“Oh, and I know just how she feels, that sheep,” Emily said. “Look at the smile on her face, Phil.”
“She looks just like a sheep to me, Em,” Philip said. “She would look a bit silly if she were smiling.”
“But the smile is all inside her,” she said. “It fills her up. And look at her wool. I feel as though I could sink my fingers in it and feel her warmth. How did you do that, Uncle Matthew? Oh, I do wish our children did not have to grow up. I want to keep them close to me, just like those lambs, for all the rest of my life. And do not say, Phil, that they and I would look a bit silly when they are fifty and I am over seventy.”
Philip laughed, but with obvious affection for his wife. “At least I will be able to tell my father that you show a bit more talent now than you did as a boy, sir,” he said.
“A bit more?” Emily said.
“Perhaps you would like him to decide for himself, Emily,” Matthew said, reaching up to the shelf to lift the carving down and set it on the bench. “Perhaps you will accept this as a gift.”
She gasped and clasped her hands to her bosom. “Oh,” she said. “Really?” And she took Matthew completely by surprise by flinging her arms about his neck and hugging him. “Thank you, Uncle Matthew. I do not know what to say.”
Matthew met his nephew’s eyes over the top of her head. Philip was looking embarrassed. He was not smiling. Even so, it was an extraordinary moment. It brought what felt like a knot toMatthew’s stomach. Of something…lost. Something missing. He imagined for a moment that she was Helena, his daughter, hugging him like this, overwhelmed with gratitude for some small favor he had done her.
“That is incredibly generous of you,” Philip said. “We will treasure it. Thank you, sir.”
We, he had said. Not justshe.
“The kettle will be boiling dry if I do not make the tea soon,” Matthew said, leading the way back to his living quarters.
Emily set her carving carefully down on the table and stood gazing at it while Matthew made the tea and covered the pot with a cozy before slicing the fruitcake he had baked himself. Not all the fruit had sunk to the bottom, as it often did, he noted with satisfaction. And there was not that telltale layer of darker-colored cake at the bottom to signify that he had underbaked the cake and left raw dough there. In fact, it looked near perfect, and he could only hope it tasted as good. It had even risen.
Philip explained during tea that he had long wanted to call upon his uncle, the only surviving relative on his side of the family apart from his mother and father, and his children, of course. He had especially wished it after marrying Emily, who had seven brothers and sisters and so many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews that he was not sure anyone had ever made an accurate count.
“And if anyone ever has,” he said, “someone new is sure to come along the very next day to be added to the number.”
“Oh, Phil,” Emily said, laughing. “We have always been a close family. And we can certainly count. This is a very nice cake, Uncle Matthew. You have even learned to cook, something I have never had to do, to my shame.”
“It was either learn or starve,” Matthew said. “Really, it was an easy choice to make.”
“I never knew quite what caused the rift between you and the rest of our family,” Philip said. “Your wife, my aunt, died after giving birth to a stillborn baby, I learned when I was growing up. Everyone tried to comfort you—my grandparents, my mother and father, my great-grandmother—but you went away without a word to anyone and did not come back until many years later. Then you came to live here and work here when you might have lived comfortably in the house Great-Grandmama left you. The farm there is prosperous enough. You might have lived right beside us. But you did not even come to see us, and nobody came here to see you. I have never understood it.”
Emily reached across the table to pat the back of his hand. “Papa-in-Law has always said that if you wanted to come home at any time, Uncle Matthew, you would do it,” she said. “He says that your not coming means you want nothing to do with any of us and is a decision we must respect. He says he never fully understood you and does not now—because you do not choose to be understood. He did not want us to come bothering you when Phil asked him a couple of weeks or so ago if we might. But he did not forbid it. Not that he could, of course, since Phil is a grown man. But he said if we wanted to try, then we must do so, though we must be ready to find that you would not welcome us very warmly.”
Matthew sat very still, taking in all her words. Then he sighed. “I was never happy as a boy,” Matthew said. “I did not fit in. I do not put all the blame on my parents or upon your father, Philip. They tried their best, I believe. It was just that their best was not what I wanted or needed. Eventually, after my wife and daughter died and the comfort my family offered me was to tell me that itwas better that way and God’s will had been done, I had to leave. I stayed away for longer than ten years, learning wood carving and carpentry as well as some things about myself and what I wanted of the rest of my life. When I returned, I decided it was best not to renew any ties with my family. And when they did not reach out to me, it seemed they felt the same way, and I was relieved. I never did understand why my grandmother changed her will to leave her property to me instead of to your father as she had always intended. It must have come as a severe shock to him and to my parents, your grandparents.”
“Well, no.” Philip laughed as he stirred sugar into his second cup of tea. “It could be no shock, could it, since Papa was the one who had suggested it.”
Matthew stared blankly at him. “Suggested what?” he asked.
