Chapter 30

“I should have told you about my brother,” Oak’s dad said. “But the truth is, I was ashamed.”

They were sitting—all of them, Oak and her parents and Alder and his mom and the kittens—in Alder’s front room. Oak’s dad and mom were side by side on the pink velvet couch, holding hands. Alder’s mom sat in the tall blue chair.

Oak sat with Alder on the floor across from the couch. She let her shoulder press into Alder’s shoulder so he would know she was right there. He was trembling a little.

Her dad said, “Let me tell you about him now.” He blinked, staring off as if looking back in time. Then he said, his words rushing like water undammed, “My brother and I were like two strings on a banjo. Close as could be, and meant to be played together. He was my little brother. I was four years older. He was born with the same dark, wavy hair he had all his life. He was a chubby, milky baby with a smile for everyone. When he was little, he’d follow me everywhere I went, and he made the cutest chirping sound. That’s why we called him Canary at first. Later we kept calling him that because of the way he could sing.”

From where she sat next to Alder, Oak could see the portrait that hung on the wall of the dining room. Baby Alder and his mom and his dad. Her uncle, who she would never get to meet. She pressed her arm into Alder’s again. He was warm, and solid, and right there.

Her dad continued. “Our band, the one we planned to start one day—we called it Canary and the Coal Miners. I’d be one of the Coal Miners, on guitar, and we’d find someone to play bass, someone else to play drums, and Canary would sing and strum the banjo. That was the plan when we were kids. But then, you know how it can be, life . . . interfered. By the time I was in high school, those four years between us might as well have stretched to forty. I know Canary was disappointed in me. Angry too. I was busy with other things, and I didn’t make time for us to make music together.”

Walnut hopped up onto Oak’s dad’s lap. He looked right at home.

“And then I went off to college,” he continued. “There’d be time later, I figured, for us to make our music. Canary was still just a kid. But soon, Canary wasn’t a kid anymore. And he never quit playing, even when I did. He called me once, when he was just about to graduate high school. He wanted me to join him on the road. He wanted to give Canary and the Coal Miners a shot, he said. A real shot.”

Oak’s dad scratched Walnut’s head.

“But I’d just finished college, and I was trying to find a job so I could start paying back those student loans. Our parents died that year, just a few months apart, and I felt this pressure to be a real grown-up. I couldn’t just take off and travel around like some dumb kid, I told him. I had responsibilities. I had a future.”

Oak’s dad made a sound—a sort of laugh, a sort of choke, like he was holding back tears. Her mom laid a hand on his leg. Then he went on. “Canary didn’t say much to that, though I could tell I’d hurt his feelings. He hung up, and that was that. The thing about time is that it passes. And time passed. I don’t think we ever meant to stop speaking—not then. It was just that I was so busy, and then he was so busy. He made an album—no Coal Miners, just Canary. He’d changed his last name, too, to Madigan, and that felt to me like a real cut, like he’d severed himself from me.

“The first time I heard one of his songs on the radio, I was on my way to pick you up for a date, Olivia. And then there was his voice in my car—so clear, so beautiful . . . well, I’m ashamed to tell you that it didn’t make me feel proud to hear my brother’s voice. It made me feel jealous.”

Oak’s dad shook his head. He stopped petting Walnut. Oak watched her mom lace her fingers through her father’s. He cleared his throat, like something had gotten stuck, and then continued.

“Little things can become big things, if you let them,” her dad said. “I let that little thing—my jealousy—become a big thing—a reason not to stay in touch. I had my life, and Canary had his. I heard he got married around the same time I did, but we didn’t go to one another’s weddings. After you were born, Oak, I did send a birth announcement to the last address I had for him. But it came back marked Return to Sender.”

“We had moved by then,” Alder’s mom said. “To this house. I suppose we never filled out a change of address form.”

“I meant to track him down, but time just goes so fast. And then,” Oak’s dad said, and his voice grew thick, “then, the next I heard, Canary had—he had run out of time.”

Next to her, Alder slumped a little, and Oak put her arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry your dad died, Alder,” she said.

Alder sniffed, wiped his cheeks. “Thanks,” he said, tilting his head to rest atop Oak’s.

“But now,” said Alder’s mom, “now, somehow, you’ve moved right next door.”

“Right next door,” Oak’s dad said, his voice full of wonder. “Amazing.” And then he looked at Alder. “And even more amazing—I have a nephew.”

Oak heard Alder gulp nervously. He sat up straight and nodded.

“And I have a cousin,” Oak said. She looked around at her parents, at Alder and his mom. She listened to Canary’s voice—her uncle’s voice—as it wailed and sang. Maybe Canary wasn’t here with them . . . but maybe he wasn’t really gone, either. After all, like Mort said, energy never dies.

“Alder,” her dad said, and he got up from the couch, came around to the other side of the coffee table, and knelt down right beside them. He put his hand on Alder’s shoulder, and Alder’s hand reached up to meet it.

“Yes,” Alder said.

They had, Oak saw, the same hands. The same long fingers. The same straight nails.

Oak’s dad—Alder’s uncle—spoke. “I wasn’t the brother I wish I had been. I can’t change that now. But I have so much to tell you about your dad. So much to share. And more than that. I promise—if you’ll let me—”

“Yes,” Alder said again. “Yes.”