The Truth About Forever(42)

"These things are a real lifesaver when you're doing longdistance remodeling," she explained as she hooked the camera up to the TV. "I don't know what we ever did without them."

She pushed a button, and the screen went black. Then, just like that, the beach house appeared. It was the front view, the way it looked if you had your back to the ocean. There was the deck, with its one rickety wooden bench. There were the stairs that led over the dunes. There was the old gas grill, beneath the kitchen window. It had been so long since I'd seen it, but still I felt a lurch in my stomach at how familiar it was. It seemed entirely possible that if you leaned in closer, peering in the back window, you'd see my dad on the couch reading the paper and turning his head to look as you called his name.

My mother was just staring at it, holding her coffee cup with both hands, and I wondered again if she was going to be able to handle this. But then I looked at my sister, and she was watching my mom too. After a second she said, very carefully, "So this is the way it looks now. You can see that the roof is sagging a bit. That's from the last big storm."

My mother nodded. But she didn't say anything.

"It needs to be braced, and we have to replace some shingles as well. The carpenter was saying as long as we're shoring it up we might want to consider adding a skylight, or something… since the living room gets so little light from those front windows. You know how much you always complained about that."

I remembered. My mother was forever turning on lights in the living room, complaining it was like a dungeon. ("All the better for naps!" my father would claim, just before falling asleep on the couch with his mouth open.) She preferred to spend her time in the front bedroom, which had a big window. Plus the moose gave her the creeps. I wondered what she was thinking now. It was hard for her; it was hard for me, too. But I kept remembering everything Kristy had said two nights before, about not being afraid, and how if I'd come home when I got scared, I would have missed everything that had happened.

"But I've never dealt with skylights," Caroline said. "I don't know how much they run, or if they're even worth the trouble."

"It depends on the brand," my mother said, her eyes on the screen. "And the size. It varies."

I had to hand it to my sister. For all her pushing, she knew what she was doing. Take one small step—show the picture, which she knew would be hard for my mother—and pair it with something she'd feel entirely sure about: work.

It went the same way for the next half hour, as Caroline carefully guided us through the beach house, room by room. At first it was all I could do to swallow over the lump in my throat when I saw the view from the deck of the ocean, or the room with the bunk beds where I always slept. Even worse were the pictures of the main bedroom, where a pair of my dad's beat-up running shoes was still parked against the wall by the door.

But slowly, carefully, Caroline kept bringing us back. For every sharp intake of breath, every moment I was sure I couldn't bear it, there was a question, something logical to grab onto. I'm thinking maybe glass blocks in place of that window in the bathroom, she'd say, what do you think? Or, see how the linoleum's coming up in the kitchen? I found some great blue tile I think we could replace it with. Or would tile be too expensive? And each time, my mother would reply, grabbing the answer as if it was a life preserver in a choppy sea. Once she had her breath back, they'd move on.

When the slideshow was over, I left them in the living room discussing skylights and went to pull my laundry out of the dryer so I could iron something for the info desk the next day. I was almost done when my mother appeared in the doorway, leaning against it with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Well," she said, "your sister sure seems to have found herself a project, hasn't she?"

"Where is she?"

"Out in her car. She's got some swatches she wants to show me." She sighed, running her hand over the edge of the door frame. "Apparently, corduroy upholstery is all the rage these days."

I smiled, smoothing a crease out of the pants I was holding. "She is an expert at this," I said. "You know what a great job she did with her place, and the mountain house."

"I know." She was quiet for a second, watching as I folded a shirt and put it in the basket at my feet. "But I can't help but think it's a lot of money and work for such an old house. Your father always said the foundation would probably go in a few years… I just wonder if it's worth it."

I pulled Kristy's jeans out of the dryer and folded them. The black heart on the knee was just as dark as ever. "It might be fun," I said, picking my words carefully. "To have a place to go again."

"I don't know." She pulled a hand through her hair. "I wonder if it would be easier, if the foundation might be flawed, to just take it down. Then we'd have the lot and could start over."

I was bent over, peering into the dryer to pull out the last things in there, and for a second I just froze. Minutes ago, I'd gotten my first look at the beach house in over a year. To think that it, like so much else, might one day just be gone—I couldn't even imagine. "I don't know," I said. "I bet the foundation's not that bad."

"Mom?" Caroline called from the living room. "I've got the swatches… Where are you?"