The room was dark, with a window at one end, a desk facing the door. The air was stale, and Jake turned to look for a light switch along the wall, flicking it when found the hard plastic shell of the switch plate.
The smell of cigars and dust met his nostrils, and the lamps attached to the switch glowed yellow, splashing dull light over the ’70s paneled walls and revealing a recliner, pictures hung on the walls, and a space heater in one corner. An antique crystal scotch set sat on a bar cart near the recliner, the tumblers dusty, cobwebs between them and the top of the stopper on the decanter.
They both stood just inside the door, and Jake let his eyes adjust to the semidarkness, taking it all in. It was sparse, the chair was threadbare, the drapes at least thirty years old, the carpet an odd color of yellow. The TV across from the recliner was ancient, with one of those remotes with a cord snaking all the way back to the arm of the chair. A VCR with several tapes stacked on top blinked 12:00.
What caught his eye finally was the large wood desk, with not much on top but an old, thick telephone book, a set of bull’s horns, a blotter, and a chipped mug bristling with pens off to one side.
Then he saw the chair. It was tall backed with a crocheted throw across it, a riot of pink colors in a spiral pattern.
Jake walked toward it, not believing his eyes. He ran his hand over the throw, the lumpy stitches bumping under his fingertips. He let out the breath he had unconsciously been holding.
“Holy shit,” he murmured.
His mother, when he was younger, before addiction took full hold, had crocheted like a madwoman. He would often sit with her on the front steps of wherever they were living at the moment and listen to her counting rows and stitches out loud as he lay back and watched the clouds go by. They would drink lemonade in the summer, Ovaltine when it got colder. She would give the blankets to neighbors in exchange for having them watch him when she had to work or needed food. In Washington Heights, those blankets meant you stayed warm when the heat cut out. All the neighbors had them, in whatever color yarn she could scrounge up on her meager paycheck.
Those were good days, and he swallowed the emotion that rose up the moment he saw that it was the exact same pattern.
The only one she knew how to do.
“My mom made this. I’m sure of it,” Jake said, removing his hand from it.
“Made what?” Peony asked as she picked up an old newspaper folded into the storage pocket on the arm of the recliner and set it down on the seat, stepping over to Jake and eyeing him critically, probably because he was staring at a blanket like an idiot.
“This blanket,” he said.
“Veronica brought a number of those over to me the day we moved into the bunkhouse. I didn’t know they were Heather’s. Makes sense that she wouldn’t want them in the house. I’ve never seen this one before.”
“I’m just going to leave that there,” he muttered. That was a memory best left for right now. He wasn’t sure of how much more he could manage tonight.
Jake pushed the chair back and turned to look at the desk. The blotter was dented and stained with coffee rings and random math calculations written in fading ink. But then he saw an address and phone numbers, and he peered closer, running his finger over the indentations that the lettering had made in the green paper.
“That was my address when I was still living with Ashley.”
“Your ex-wife,” Peony said. “Interesting.”
He looked over the blotter, seeing other addresses, names of restaurants he’d owned, including the one he’d just sold—Amüs—in Greenpoint.
It was obviously the leavings of a man searching for his son, writing down the information on whatever he had on hand. Emotion rose in him again, and he lowered himself into the chair, the leather soft, the springs squeaking slightly as he did.
His dad had sat here. Jake tried to picture him staring out the window to one side, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk, scowling like a ranch man would. He couldn’t, so he examined the desk in front of him, trying the drawers on the desk while Peony eyeballed the bookshelf.
The first drawer had a ball of elastic bands, a stapler, a crumbly old eraser, and an Altoids tin. The rest had random slips of paper, business cards, and pens, but no files or anything that looked official.
“Nothing in his desk. Maybe his bookshelf?”
“I don’t see anything,” Peony replied. “Perhaps he kept it in his files out in the cattle barn office?”
“I haven’t found anything yet but ranch stuff. I’ll keep looking, though.”
Peony moved into the middle of the room, her fingers pressed to her mouth, her eyes misted over. Jake stepped to her, his arm automatically circling her shoulders.
“Hey, it’s obvious there’s nothing here, and you don’t have to take care of this room until you’re ready, yeah?”
Peony leaned into him. “This room still smells like him. I never thought I’d feel him with me when—”
She sniffled, and Jake held her tightly, a lump in his own throat. This was the closest he’d been to “seeing” his father since driving the Lincoln with Liz into the medical clinic. There were hints elsewhere, of course, but this was his dad at his most personal, not Brett West the cattleman everyone else had known. The space was inherently male, the indent in the recliner seat made by one person, the fingerprints on the scotch decanter and glasses left by a man Jake could only know by the memories of those who loved him, the spiky handwriting on the blotter a match to all the records in the barn office.
The scent in here, stale and dissipating now that they had opened the door, was the most visceral connection of all, but it had less meaning for him than it did for Peony.
