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“I was joking that day, when I asked if we’d found your ancestral homeland, but it turns out to be true. It’s all in these letters. Here.”
I hand him the first one Hazel wrote, on New Year’s Day in 2015. I know what words he’s reading as he scans the opening lines: It’s been fifty-nine years since I first clapped eyes on you, but I remember the moment like it was yesterday.
“What is this?” Sam asks. “What does it have to do with me?”
“That’s a letter from your grandfather’s sister, Hazel, to Evelyn Cabot, the woman she loved. They lived in this house, together, for sixty years. I found it yesterday, hidden in there.” I point to the splintered shelf. “Keep reading. Your grandpa Billy shows up pretty quick.”
After finishing Hazel’s first letter, Sam turns to me. “All I ever knew about my grandfather is what my mom and Bà told me. I grew up thinking he was this larger-than-life hero, saving wounded orphans in the war and working for the governor. But here, where Hazel says Billy ‘skulked and startled like a kicked dog’ after his father hit him? He was just a scared little kid, Audrey. It makes me wish I could go back in time and rescue him, you know?”
“Hazel tried to,” I say. “At least, she didn’t move away when she had the chance.”
“How come I never knew she existed before now?”
“Keep reading. I’ll make us another coffee.”
A couple minutes later, Sam looks up as I set down his latte. “I love this part, where Billy’s having a catch with Evelyn. I’m no good at baseball, either.”
“Those two had a special relationship, you’ll see.”
“I love all this history stuff about Freedom Riders and the Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK getting shot,” Sam says after finishing the next letter. “Sounds like Evelyn was pretty much Billy’s best friend.”
“Billy wanted to live with Evelyn and Hazel, but they couldn’t risk it.”
“At least he had a safe place to hang out. It’s wild that his sister’s secret lesbian lover helped my grandpa train for cross-country and taught him how to drive. But why does it end like this, with past regrets and things falling apart?”
“You’ll see.” I hand Sam the next letter.
Instead of taking it, he asks, “Can I go see the tiles Billy and his father laid in your bathroom first?”
“Oh, sure.” Sam drank two lattes in the past hour; of course he needs the bathroom. “I should warn you it’s kind of messy in there. I’ve never had a visitor upstairs before.”
“Look who you’re talking to,” Sam says. “I slept in a tent last night.”
I take a turn myself when he gets back. Looking down, I experience a kind of time warp knowing the man sitting in my dining room is the grandson of the teenager who installed these black and white hexagons. By the time I come downstairs, Sam’s finished reading Hazel’s letter about the sheep.
“Lucinda Green is the Cozy Cozy Lady, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s her husband, Marcus, who she tells stories about. I like how Billy helped herd the sheep when they escaped. Don’t you love Charlie dog?”
“Charlie dog is the best,” Sam agrees. “We had a dog in Saranac Lake, a hound named Iago. He stayed with Claire, though. I haven’t settled down enough since then to get one of my own. You should have a dog, Audrey.”
“I’ve got a barn cat.”
Sam waves a dismissive hand. “Cats don’t count. Anyway, it’s cool Lucinda kept Hazel’s secret.”
“I suppose, but don’t you think it’s weird she never told me about Hazel and Evelyn?”
“Maybe she didn’t think it was her truth to tell. What’s next?”
“Billy goes to Vietnam and meets your grandmother.”
“This is amazing, Audrey.” Sam points to Hazel’s letter from April 3, 2015. “This part, about Mai’s parents being hard to convince and the astrologer and the Tet Offensive? Bà tells that story every year on their anniversary. I wonder if she knows my grandpa had help paying for her visa?”
“Two thousand dollars must have been a lot back then,” I say. “The part that makes me sad is how Hazel wished she could’ve had a child of her own.”
“At least that’s different now. One of my clients is a collective of polyamorous queer homesteaders. They’ve got, like, six kids between them.”
“Hazel would have been a good mother.” Saying that aloud makes me miss my own. All my life, I’ve been searching for someone to miraculously fill the hole Mom’s death left in my heart. That space belongs to her, though. It seems to me now the real miracle is how my heart has grown around it.
