Chapter 13: The Family House

The jet climbed through the snow, and I did not look out the window.

I looked at my hands on the leather armrest.

They were raw at the knuckles from the clinic's wash stations and the Haldanes' bleach.

The trustee sat across from me with a tablet on her knee and let me be quiet.

Somewhere over Maryland I caught myself remembering the weight of Lorne's thigh under my palms.

I closed my fists and made myself stop.

A steward set a plate in front of me, and I ate all of it, because I had not eaten since breakfast.

The Fitzhugh house stood at the top of a hill above Baltimore harbor, with every window lit at two in the morning.

A man in a dark suit opened my car door before the wheels stopped.

Inside the front hall, an old man was standing very straight with one hand on a cane.

He had white hair and a long jaw, and he did not say a word.

He looked at my face for a long time, and then at the scar through my eyebrow.

"My daughter-in-law's chin," he said at last. His voice cracked on the name.

"I'm Wynne," I said.

"Harlan Fitzhugh." He put out his hand, and it was shaking. "I am your grandfather."

I took it.

He did not pull me into his arms, and I was grateful, because I did not know how to stand in someone's arms.

He turned and led me down the hall to a portrait hung over the stairs.

A man and a woman sat close together on a garden bench, laughing at whoever held the brush.

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