The Book of Apologies

The moment she answered the door, Tanya's indignation turned her pouty lips inward despite doe eyes betraying compassion. “You missed the funeral.”

So what, she expected me to sit caged in the tempest of my inherited temper while the mourning distorted the truth to make death more tolerable? The itch to pick a fight tickled my tongue, but my older sister had been my solace as many times as she had been my rival. Consideration for her genuine grief deflated the urge.

“You know why,” I grumbled. I shouldered past her into a foyer darkened by deep cherry woods and autumn falling like another curtain over broad windows, drowning otherwise rich colors in a dullness to coincide with wilting condolences. I quickly corrected a tug of sympathy. “But I’m here now. Figures he’d manage that.”

I should have known he would be bitter, would find one last chance to make his problems mine; after all, I was the daughter who eradicated what little remained of our ‘relationship’ through willpower comparable to excommunication. Naming me the executor of his estate forced me to join the parade he rightfully assumed I would miss.

Because I had mourned his loss decades ago.

Now, I simply hoped he was witnessing this enraging stunt amongst the damned. It was the only time I considered Hell might actually exist—it was the first time I wanted it to.

My sister shifted awkwardly while I shed my coat. “Do you even want to know how he died?”

“T, if hospice volunteering has taught me anything, it’s that people die like they live.” I stifled a self-serving smirk. “Let me guess, slow and painful?”

She winced, but she didn’t have time to scold or argue. Dismayed, she conceded to a short woman with broad shoulders and face softened by wrinkles who practically floated over creaking boards to shake my hand. The stepmother I’d never met was surprisingly warm, both in her hands and in her complicated smile.

“I’m Martha,” she sang, low and sweet. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Callie.”

It was not nice; I would have preferred to go the rest of my life without meeting her. Even so, ingrained social expectations begged me to recite the nicety, an inward war raged in a split second. Fortifying my philosophy that the dead were not about to change the living, I chose to toe the line rather than fake politeness.

“I like your taste in paintings. I recognize the one above the fireplace.”

“Impressive. My art is usually too obscure to be fully appreciated.” She gazed at the picture, and the spark in her brown eyes turned glassy when she saw her memory instead. “Your father hated them at first, so much that one of the few times I scolded him was to declare I would have no more fussing.” Her laugh arrived more akin to a breath than any sort of substantial mirth, and her next words departed as sighs riding atop tides of longing: “I think Derek came to like them. I caught him staring enough anyways.”

Though his name lacerated my ears, I reprimanded another pull in pity’s direction. Still, her protection of what she loved caused admiration to bloom a fragile bud without inner protest, and I found the new impression, at least, made the halls feel less haunting.

“The lawyer dropped off the will a few days ago,” Martha explained over her shoulder. We followed her to a study littered by paper and more enigmatic paintings, and I greeted my two eldest siblings before she encouraged me toward the desk.

“Have you all read through this yet?” I asked.

No, no one besides Martha.

“Alright, then, let’s get to it.”

I read the allocations aloud and received nods from each contented recipient. Everyone so easily satisfied, I confidently turned the page, thinking I would check the signature and be on my way—but to my horror, there was one more beneficiary.

My mouth went dry. A hammer knocked against my chest.

“Callie?” Martha’s voice was far away even as she gently squeezed my shoulder.

“Oh, uhm, yeah. It’s just—well, I’m in here, too.”

Each sibling’s face morphed into raised eyebrows and parted lips to mimic my confusion. “Well, what’s it say?” Tanya pressed, speaking for everyone.

“To Callie, I designate the green bookshelf in the attic and all its contents. Happy reading.”

I sunk further into the chair, allowing the papers to slip through my fingers. A bookshelf. He left me...a bookshelf. And, presumably, books. What for? There was a silent, collective bafflement amongst us children.

But not Martha. Her smug grin caught my peripheral. I regarded her carefully—intently—during the discussion to divide additional heirlooms, none of which I wanted of course. I eyed her through dinner, not bothering to add to conversation about memories with “dad.” I slumped against the kitchen door frame and scrutinized her motherly goodbyes.

Finally alone, Martha's mysterious smirk returned in full, fanning my curiosity. “Shall we?”

The attic was cleaner than I anticipated: renovated, full of furniture, and boasting a collection of unopened chess sets hung on the wall across from a barren hospital bed. “His study,” Martha explained while walking straight to an olive-painted bookshelf. “He practically slept up here the past two years, but he had us move him permanently over his last few months.” She pulled a matching curtain from the face of the bookshelf. “And honey, here’s why.”

Six ledges were lined with black books each the same height but varying widths. There were no markings on the bindings, no indications of author or volume. Another glance at Martha, and her cheeks touched her eyes. She grabbed a book for me when I refused to move.

“This is the first one,” she said when she laid it in my hands.

The cover was smooth, almost leather, and it wasn’t a book, exactly: it was a small notebook so thick it bulged in protest against a haphazard ribbon.

I untied the cover slowly.

“Dear Callie,” it began on the top line in that undeniably-his, uppercase writing. “My greatest hope is that somehow, this book finds its way to you. Since becoming practically bedridden with a failing liver, and the diabetes making it worse, I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate my life while I sit at death’s door, just waiting for it to open. All this thinking, aided by Martha’s constant questioning, has made me realize that I’m not nearly as afraid to die as I am of what I’m leaving behind: our broken relationship. It is the most painful, shameful legacy I’ve created over this lifetime.”

A palpable sting clenched my throat.

“I tried counseling at one point, but when it came to that which I needed to talk about most to find peace with passing, I couldn’t. Because the only person I want to talk about you with is...you.

“When I finally admitted to it, Martha convinced me to do just that. We decided this might be a chance for me—and maybe even you someday—to process through the lens of death what I could not confront in life. Each day, I’ll write all the apologies I feel in my heart concerning you, and with every “I’m sorry,” I’ll leave a dollar. Because of my anger, I paid the price of losing you; here’s to hoping my humility can pay the price of getting you back, no matter how late.”

I flipped the page, and a bundle of dollar bills fell to the floor. I left them there, far too hungry instead for the words.

“Callie—there are so many places I could begin. So many apologies I could spew in writing that I never found the courage to say with my voice.

“I’m sorry you were born the youngest. Your siblings knew me when the worst of life had not yet hardened me. My love for our family turned to shame and control when my business failed and the foreclosure on the house left us homeless that Christmas. And then the lying and cheating and the divorce...But my inadequate excuses would have to be a whole other notebook.

“I used to think you were born at the worst possible timing, and moreover, you looked just like me. You always have. And we’re far more alike than you’ll ever be willing to admit. I’m sorry to say that’s probably why I singled you out: The twins were beginning college, and Tanya was so timid, so soft-spoken at the time...but you were defiant and loud and stubborn. Being like me made you the perfect enemy.

“I’m sorry I treated you like my enemy when you should have been my treasure.

“I’m sorry I gave you an enemy. You were only ten when the divorce happened, and no ten-year-old should have an enemy. I took your freedom to love as freely as children should—I’m sorry.”

Tears blurred my vision, drowned my speech into sputters. I returned the money and I asked if I could come back on the weekends. From there, Martha and I settled into a pleasant routine over the next six months: Sometimes she would sit with me, but mostly she left me alone to collect my apologies—my inheritance—one dollar at a time.

“I’m sorry…

“...for when I tried to push your mother over the upstairs banister, and then forced you—the sole witness—to lie to the police…

“...for beating you as punishment when you ordered a hamburger at Chili’s. I apologize for each bruise, each lash...

“...for the time I said ‘Watch your mother leave you’ even though it was me whom she ran from...

“...for saying ‘I love you’ and expecting you to say it back, even after I’d just finished hitting you…

“...for letting you speak to your mother only when I was listening on the other line...

“...for not accepting that you’re a loner. In fact, I’m sorry for teaching you how to be better off alone...

“...for calling you ‘pathetic’ the last time we spoke…”

The apologies continued, book upon book, specific and raw and honest. Some days the newfound grief tumbled out in howling waves, but the emotion was complex, too angry to be clean remorse. My life had been true and beautiful without him because I hadn’t known this version of him existed. Could even exist.

Most days, I was simply surprised. Each page melted the stone sitting calloused and ignored in my chest until the culmination of apologies provoked a foreign, welcomed warmth.

By the time I absorbed the last page, the bewilderment withered and was replaced by new heartache. I met a different man in these pages; thus, I had to face the reality that I was going to miss him. It was finally okay to miss him.

A dead man changed me after all, I discovered with a repentant chuckle.

I lingered in shock at the humbling epiphany when Martha whispered, “Twenty thousand and one” just as she tallied the last of the bills for me. Both the realization and the total gave me an idea.

“Can I have one of those?” I asked.

I opened the last page and began to write, my cursive like a kiss blown towards his last words.

“Dad, I accept your apologies.

“Now, I have one of my own: I’m sorry I wished Hell for you.

“Reading about your regrets—about how you acknowledged my pain—has helped turn you from a vicious monster into a human. Today, all I can think is that to be trapped by the inability to express your heart is a living Hell I cannot imagine.

“Seeing as you’re already gone, all I can do is enjoy the healing you’ve offered me. All I can do is hope for Heaven for you.

“I know they say you can’t take anything with you when you leave, but I hope God makes an exception for this dollar bill. I’d really like to give it to you. I’d really like to say I’m sorry, too.”