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“I felt that way, too, sometimes,” Dad says, this hallucinatory version of my father more direct and honest than I knew him to be in life. “It wasn’t her fault, though. She tried so hard. Things got bad for her every winter, but she made me swear I’d never send her away like her parents did. I kept that promise, even after that time you found her in the bathtub. The doctor wanted to commit her to the psych ward, but I said it was an accident so I could bring your mom home. That’s why Grandma and Grandpa were mad at me at her funeral. They felt I didn’t get her the help she needed. They worried about you, too, that you could end up like her. You scared me that time I found you cutting yourself, but you’ve been good since then, haven’t you, kiddo?”

I’m about to tell him sure, I’ve been good. Then I remember this is my hallucination. I can say whatever I want. “I know you did your best, Dad, but I haven’t been good. I had my heart broken by my own mother when I was only ten years old. I don’t know how to put it back together.”

“None of us knows how to heal their own heart, Audrey.” He shakes his head sadly as the vision of my father I’ve conjured goes off script. “Look at me. I dated some, after your mom, but I never remarried. I was too afraid of letting another woman down. But the way you took care of me, when I got sick? Having those months together fixed me.” Dad brushes aside my hair with his callused hands. “David would have done that for you, too, if you’d had more time. This place you’re in now, the people here, they’re good for you. I feel it.” He taps a fist to his chest like I’ve seen in scenes of worshippers on Yom Kippur. “Let them in, Audrey. That’s all you have to do. Let them in, and know you deserve to be loved, the way Mom loved you, and David loved you, and I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad,” I whisper.

“I know you do, kiddo.”

I wake to a breeze blowing chill through my window. The pages of the police report remain scattered across my bed, but the dream of my father has dissolved in the night. Its warmth stays with me, though, as does the story he told about my mother. To know she first tried to die years before I was born, that her disease predated my birth, means it couldn’t have been my fault. The revelation relieves me of a burden whose weight I hadn’t fathomed.

I think, too, of what my dream-dad said about this place and its people being good for me. My dead father has no idea where I am or who I know. Those words came from inside me. To let people in. To believe myself deserving of love. Such simple phrases for the project of a lifetime.

I stuff the pages of the police report back into the manila envelope. If only I’d had the courage to read them sooner, I think. I wasn’t ready, when that envelope arrived, to allow Mom’s story to touch my troubled heart. Now that I have, its truth, though tragic, is a balm for the bruised muscle beating in my chest.

I’m too wobbly, this morning, to carry an empty wineglass down the steep back steps to the kitchen. Instead, I circle down the front stairs that made Hazel feel she was going back in time. Passing through the dining room, all I’m thinking about is the coffee I’ll soon be drinking when I notice a newspaper clipping has fluttered to the floor. Stooping to pick it up, I recognize its headline from Hazel’s letter: William McIntyre, Aide to Four Governors, Killed in Easter Sunday Thruway Collision.

As I place the clipping on the table, a word catches my eye. Toward the bottom of the column, where survivors are listed, I see, for the first time, the name that replaced McIntyre when Billy’s daughter, Patience, got married.

It’s Rensselaer.

A shiver runs down my spine. I recall Sam saying you can find the name McIntyre on headstones all over upstate New York. They can’t all be his relatives—isn’t that what he said? The same holds true for Rensselaer, a name so ubiquitous it’s plastered on streets and towns up and down the Hudson Valley. I assumed Hazel’s letter didn’t name her brother’s grandson because the obituary didn’t include the baby’s name. I was wrong. There it is, printed in black and white on the last line of the column: Samuel.

A baby boy named Samuel Rensselaer. A grandmother from Vietnam. A grandfather who won a track championship for the Schuywich Warlocks. Hazel’s narrative slips from her time into mine as I realize the great-nephew she never met is the Sam I know.

I drop into a chair, my need for coffee forgotten. Only two people breathing on this earth know the true story of what drove Billy McIntyre to disavow his parents and sister: me and Sam’s grandmother. Sam knows nothing about the terrible things that happened when Mai’s husband brought her home to meet his parents. Even after Billy’s death decades ago, Mai chose to keep that pain a secret. And yet—Hazel wrote it all down, and not just to jog Evelyn’s memory.

I find the letter where Hazel lamented the rift that calved her brother from his kin and reread its closing passage:

What meaning can be gleaned from my family’s sad story I have no idea, but perhaps these scenes will lay the foundation for a future reckoning I can’t yet see.

Hazel looped her pen across these pages with the intention of disclosing the truth. Evelyn secreted the letters away until the accident of a torn book cover revealed their hiding place. A divine triangulation, my caffeine-starved brain conjectures. Or does this geometry bend more ways than three? Sam first mentioned the name McIntyre when he came to walk the boundary of my land, an encounter so fleeting I might have forgotten all about him had he not returned to shear my sheep. My sheep came to me because of the Cozy Cozy Lady episode Lucinda streamed from my barn. How far to extend this cosmic configuration? To the mindless virus that snuffed a beautiful man named David O’Shea? To the constellation of bits and bytes that put those digital images of an abandoned barn full of books in sight of my sore eyes?

Everything happens for a reason—isn’t that what believers like Nancy and Sandra would say? I can’t go that far, but I don’t need to. As it does for departed souls on All Hallow’s Eve, the veil between past and present has dissolved. I’m part of Hazel’s story now. How it ends lies with me.

I pick up my phone and unblock Sam’s number, half-expecting a cascade of messages he may have sent over the past eight months to scroll across my phone’s screen. I guess it doesn’t work like that, though. All I see is the last message I sent him back in September, telling him to stay away. I hesitate, wondering if it’s really my place to break his grandmother’s silence. Even if Sam does have the right to know the truth, what about me? I’m not sure I’m ready for Sam to amble back into my life with his pink-scarred chin and sheep-shearing arms and Shakespearian jaw.

Dawn backlights the kitchen windows. It’s not yet six, but farmers are an early breed.

Hey Sam, it’s Audrey Beacon. I found some letters in my house about your mysterious McIntyre roots if you want to come see them.

The whoosh of a sent text is all the sound my phone makes. There’s no responding ping. Sam’s probably still asleep, his device silenced for the night. Or maybe he’s blocked my number the way I blocked his, ghost for ghost. I’ll give it until tomorrow, I decide. If I don’t hear from him, I’ll figure out a different way to contact the local representative of the agricultural extension. In the meantime, Red Barn Books opens in less than a week. I’ve got a full day’s worth of work ahead of me.

I’m starting up the espresso machine when my phone pings.

I’m not far okay if I head over now?

Before I can reply, a second ping.

fyi I’m vaccinated r u?

I text back:

yes

And again:

yes