The Weight of Pages

Eleanor’s boots crunched on the gravel drive, the sound too loud in the dead quiet of her father’s property. The house, a hulking Victorian beast, loomed against the bruised winter sky, its windows like vacant eyes. Three days after the funeral, and she was back, not because she wanted to be, but because the lawyers had called. And because, even in death, her mother’s silent plea lingered, a phantom tug at Eleanor’s gut. She pushed open the heavy oak door. The cold hit first, then the smell—old paper, damp earth, and something metallic, like forgotten pennies.

He was, predictably, in the library. Always in the library. Arthur, her father, hunched over a vast, leather-bound volume on the enormous mahogany table, spectacles perched on the tip of his nose, a magnifying glass clutched in a spindly hand. Dust motes, thick as tiny galaxies, swam in the single shaft of weak sunlight cutting through a grimy windowpane. He didn’t look up immediately. Just a small, dry cough that was more of a clearing than an acknowledgement. His world was bound in these pages, always had been. Her mother, she often joked, had been merely a footnote.

“Dad,” Eleanor said, her voice sounding oddly brittle in the cavernous room. The shelves climbed, dizzyingly, to the high ceiling, crammed with books—thousands of them, stretching back centuries. History, philosophy, dead languages, forgotten sciences. Every wall a barrier of print. He grunted, finally. Lifted his head, blinked at her like a creature unused to sudden light. “Eleanor. Right. The solicitors, yes. You’re early.” Early. As if mourning had a schedule, a precise timetable for grief or paperwork. Her mother, gone. And here he was, still counting paragraphs.

“No, I’m not early. It’s exactly when they said,” she countered, walking further in, the floorboards groaning under her weight. The air was thick, heavy. She felt like she was wading through decades of unspoken words, of quiet resentment. Her mother had lived here, in the cold, beside a man who saw more life in parchment than in her eyes. It was a cold truth, hard and sharp, that sometimes cut through the surface of Eleanor’s own life, even now.

She pulled out a chair, one of the heavy, uncomfortable ones that smelled faintly of mildew, and sat opposite him. A stack of envelopes, official-looking, lay untouched by his elbow. “We need to talk about Mom’s will, Dad. And the house. The solicitor wants to know what we’re doing with everything.” She gestured vaguely at the mountains of books, the sagging furniture, the general state of graceful decay that permeated the place. It felt like a trap, this house, holding them all captive in its dust-choked embrace.

Arthur waved a dismissive hand, his gaze already drifting back to the open book. “Later, Eleanor. There’s a passage here, a commentary on Boethius, quite rare, I think. I haven’t seen this edition in years. Your mother, bless her, always insisting I organize these stacks. Said I’d lose myself in them. Well, I haven’t, have I? Not entirely.” He chuckled, a dry, papery sound. He didn’t see the irony in his words, not truly. He’d lost himself years ago, right between 'A' and 'Z'.

Eleanor clenched her jaw. “She also insisted you eat something besides toast, Dad. She insisted you get the roof fixed. She insisted you actually talk to her, sometimes.” The words came out sharper than she intended, a sudden, unexpected burst of stored-up hurt. He flinched, a subtle tightening around his eyes. She saw it. A tiny crack. Then it was gone. He picked up his magnifying glass again, peered at the text. “Eleanor, please. Not now. We’ve just buried her.”

“And you’ve just buried yourself in here again,” she shot back, feeling the sting of her own words, even as she said them. She stood up, walked to a section of shelves near the fireplace, where a few cookbooks, her mother’s, sat awkwardly amidst the ancient tomes. She ran a finger along their spines, a faint film of dust coating her skin. Then she saw it, tucked behind a copy of 'Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management'. A thin, yellowed envelope, not quite hidden, not quite on display.

She pulled it out. No name on the front. Just a faint, almost illegible postmark from fifty years ago. Her breath hitched. Inside, a single sheet of paper, folded in three. Her mother’s elegant, youthful handwriting. She unfolded it carefully. A letter, addressed to Arthur. Not a love letter, not exactly. More of a plea. *“Arthur, please, sometimes I feel like I’m living with a ghost. The books, I understand, but what about us? What about a life outside these walls?”*

Eleanor’s eyes blurred. She held the letter out, her hand trembling slightly. “Did you ever read this, Dad?” Her voice was barely a whisper now. Arthur finally looked up, really looked up, his eyes a little watery behind the thick lenses. He took the letter, slowly, as if it might crumble. His gaze flickered over the elegant script, then back to Eleanor. For a long moment, the only sound was the faint rustle of the old paper as he held it, turning it over in his hands. He didn't say anything, just looked at the words, the silent accusation of a young woman’s lonely heart.

His shoulders slumped, an almost imperceptible giving way. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. “I… I don’t recall this.” His voice was thin, reedy, stripped of its academic authority. He picked up his spectacles, put them back on, and stared at the letter. “Your mother… she often tucked things away. For safekeeping. Or perhaps… she forgot to give it to me.” The lie hung there, transparent, a fragile shield against a lifetime of neglect.

Eleanor watched him, really saw him for the first time in a long time. Not just the distant scholar, the absorbed intellect, but an old man, frail, alone, sitting amidst the dust and silence he had cultivated for decades. The books, his passion, his obsession, they were also his fortress, his way of not having to face anything real. And in that moment, a strange, unexpected pang shot through her. Not forgiveness, not yet. But something close to understanding. A cold, hard thing, but understanding all the same.

He lifted his eyes from the letter, meeting hers. The library, for once, felt less like a tomb and more like a quiet room where two people were simply, painfully, breathing the same air. He slowly refolded the letter, his movements careful, almost reverent. Then, with a soft sigh that seemed to carry the weight of all the years, he placed it gently on the open page of his Boethius, a bookmark in the story of their fractured family. He didn’t pick up the magnifying glass again. He just sat there, looking at the letter, looking at the words her mother had whispered from the grave.