Chapter 29

It was a perfectly nice dinner. Oak’s mother even apologized to Alder’s mom for cutting down the big tree without talking about it first.

“I can get a bit overzealous with my plans,” she said. “I don’t always think about how the things I do might affect other people.”

Alder noticed that Oak nodded a little when her mom said this, and he knew that she was thinking about their move to Southern California, and everything that had meant to Oak.

Alder’s mom apologized to Oak’s mom for not being neighborly. “I should have brought you cookies or offered to help you get to know the neighborhood,” she admitted, “but honestly, I was just so angry about the tree. And sad. It was like a member of the family.” She nodded to the portrait hanging on the wall.

All four of them turned to look.

“That’s my dad,” Alder explained. “He died when I was little.”

“Oh,” said Oak’s mom. Her eyes widened as if now she understood better about the tree. She turned away from the portrait, back toward Alder and his mom. When she spoke again, her voice was quietly serious. “I was wrong to cut down that tree without speaking with you first,” she said. “And the other day, when Oak said something about me cutting it down—well, it hit me then how awful it was of me to make such a decision all on my own. Just because the tree grew on our property didn’t mean that it really belonged just to us. I was only thinking of myself. I hope you can forgive me. Both of you.”

The apology wouldn’t bring the tree back, of course. The past can’t be changed. But Alder was glad when his mom reached over to hug Oak’s mom, when she said that she was forgiven. It made Alder feel proud, the way she did that. And then the two moms agreed to have a fresh start, and by the end of the meal the two of them were laughing together about the big pothole up on Silver Spur Road, wondering what it would take to get it filled.

“Oak and I will do the dishes,” Alder offered when everyone had finished eating.

“Yeah,” Oak agreed, jumping up. They began gathering the plates and silverware.

“Well, thank you, Alder,” said his mom.

Of course, Alder wasn’t only being polite. He wanted to talk to Oak, away from their mothers’ ears. “I don’t understand,” he said, his voice low, as they stacked dishes in the sink.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the test results,” said Oak.

Alder filled the sink with warm water and squirted in dish soap to make bubbles. “Maybe,” he said. He didn’t want that to be true. He wanted Oak to be his cousin. He wanted family.

In the dining room, he heard his mom get up and flip the record to the other side. It was one of Canary’s albums; When Alder had put it on earlier, he hadn’t been thinking about everyone listening to it. But it didn’t bother him, the way it once would have, to have the music playing. Instead, it felt comforting, as he dipped his hands into the warm, bubbly water, to hear his father’s crooning voice floating through the house. “We’ll figure it out,” he said to Oak, and hope rose in him like a bubble.

She nodded. “You wash, I’ll rinse,” she said, and then they fell into a rhythm—Alder rubbing each soapy dish with a sponge, then passing it to Oak, who ran it under fresh water and set it in the drying rack on the counter.

Suddenly, the kittens, who had been curled into one of the yarn baskets in the corner of the dining room, both leaped up and began meowing. They trotted into the kitchen and wound in and out of Oak’s and Alder’s legs, rubbing their heads against them, their meows becoming more like yowls.

“What is it, kitties?” Oak asked. “What got you so excited?”

Their tails, Alder noticed, were puffed up, as if by electricity.

And then the doorbell rang.

Oak and Alder froze, dishes in hands, cats between feet.

“It couldn’t be Mort,” Oak hissed. Somehow, that was the exact thing Alder had been thinking.

Maybe it was Mort, though, Alder thought. After all, stranger things—or equally strange things—had happened.

He grabbed a dish towel and dried his hands on the way to the door. His hand reached for the doorknob and hesitated, hovering, for a long moment before he grabbed it, turned it, and opened the door.

Mort was not standing on the other side.

But a man was, one who looked oddly familiar.

“Hello,” said the man, smiling. “I’m looking for my family.”

His family. Alder opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The man wore a lustrous beard, red tinged. His hair, dark blond, thinning, was brushed back from his brow. There were long wavy wrinkles across his forehead and branches of smaller wrinkles in the corner of each of his brown eyes, which were framed by square brown glasses. He was tall and thin, much taller than Alder. He wore a green T-shirt that was torn slightly at the neck and stretched out as if it was an old shirt, a favorite. He had on light blue jeans with paint spatters on the thighs; one of the knees looked about worn through. On his feet were orange sneakers.

As if by way of explanation, he held out a piece of paper he’d been holding. “My family is here?” he asked.

Alder recognized Oak’s handwriting—the note she’d left her mom. Tears filled his eyes, and as he blinked, they spilled over, wetting his cheeks, catching in his eyelashes and making the whole world sparkle.

“Yes,” Alder said, and he opened the door wide. “Your family is here. Please come in.”

Oak’s father stepped across the threshold. Oak was still in the kitchen, and the moms were still in the dining room. The kittens trotted over to the man and purred as they rubbed against his legs. He laughed, squatting down to pet them.

“Well, hello there,” he said, and just then the song that was playing—Canary’s song—rose into a crescendo, his warm, rich voice filling the whole house, as if someone had suddenly turned up the volume:

Wandering down the railroad tracks away from my sweet home

Wondering on the railroad tracks where I next will roam

Whispering on the railroad tracks why the wind has blown

Wandering down the railroad tracks away from my sweet home

Kneeling, Oak’s father froze, one hand holding the note, the other on a kitten’s head. His head was tilted up, his eyes blind, as if he searched for a face he could not see.

No one moved—not Alder, not the man, not the cats. Not on the outside. But as Canary’s voice wailed and cried out about home, about leaving home, Alder felt his insides shifting. As if they were making room for something, as if a pocket he hadn’t known was there was pulled wide open.

“Is that—” Oak’s dad began.

“It’s Canary Madigan,” Alder said. “Your brother.”

Time, Alder learned, really can stop.

The man who was his uncle knelt, and Alder stood, and to their right, on the bookshelf, Mort silently watched. The air fell still. The kittens made no sound. And Canary held one note, the last note—“home.”

It could have been a second. It could have been a minute. It could have been forever. But it wasn’t forever, because the last note ended, and the kittens purred, and the man stood.

“Are you . . .”

“Your nephew,” Alder said. And he nodded.

There were footsteps coming from the kitchen.

“Alder,” said Oak, “what are you—” She broke off suddenly, and Alder turned to see her expression. It was shock, first, when she saw who had come to the door; it froze her in place for a long moment as her brain made sense of seeing her father right there in front of her, when Alder knew she hadn’t expected him to arrive anytime soon.

And then, joy. A wide happy grin, a chirp of glee, as she rushed across the room and threw herself into his arms, which opened to catch her.

“Dad,” she said, and then her words were muffled into her father’s shirt, and he laughed and lifted her up off the floor.

“I decided to surprise you,” he said, and his voice was rough with emotion.

“You grew a beard,” Oak said.

“I sure did,” he said.

More footsteps—the moms this time.

“Carter?” said Oak’s mom as she rounded the corner, and then again when she saw him, “Carter.”

Then it was the three of them hugging—Oak and her dad and her mom, Oak squished between her parents, and Alder felt a flash of something—of yearning—as he watched, but then his mom came over and pulled him close into her side.

The cats purred so loudly it seemed there was a motor running somewhere; they purred and they rubbed everybody’s legs and they circled around until one of them nipped the other’s neck playfully, and then they pounced and rolled and kicked their hind legs like bunnies.

At last, Oak and her mom and her dad broke apart, and she turned to Alder and said, “Alder, I want to introduce you to my dad.”

“Your name is Alder?” her dad said. “Like the tree?”

Alder nodded. Words, it seemed, had escaped him.

Oak’s dad shook his head, but not like he didn’t believe it. Rather, like he did believe it. “We said we’d name our kids after trees,” he said softly. “It’s one promise we both kept, I guess.”

“Dad?” said Oak.

He turned to her. “Honey, I’d like to introduce you to someone. My nephew, Alder.”