The Man She Called Uncle Leo

"Caleb."

He ended his call before asking what was wrong.

I held out the wool.

He looked at it, then at me. "What is it?"

"Luca's scarf."

He didn't reach for it.

"You're certain?"

I turned the corner over so he could see the black stitching.

"He caught it on a fence outside our mother's house. She was already too sick to mend it. I tried."

Caleb studied the crooked repair.

He had known my brother. He had also stood beside me the night we searched an abandoned car near the lake and found nothing except an empty glove compartment and a receipt for gasoline.

"Where's Nora?" I asked.

"Downstairs."

"Ask her to meet me in the breakfast room. Tell Mrs. Porter to stay with Maisie."

"Do you want the gates closed?"

I looked at the little star.

"Keep the usual watch. Nobody stops Nora unless I tell them to."

He nodded and left.

I stayed behind another moment, holding the fabric against my palm.

For four years, I had remembered Luca angry. Luca slamming a door. Luca refusing to explain himself in front of our father.

The scarf brought back a different memory: him at nineteen, asleep in a chair with a book on his chest and our mother's knitting wound twice around his neck because he refused to admit the house was cold.

I put the wool back in the box and carried it downstairs.

The breakfast room smelled of cinnamon and coffee. Nora stood beside the long table. Mrs. Porter had not yet taken Maisie away; the child sat by the fireplace with a cookie in each hand.

"Did you open it?" she asked.

"I did."

"Did the star break again?"

"No. Your repair held."

Her shoulders relaxed.

Nora was watching the box.

"Maisie, go with Mrs. Porter," she said. "You can show her the little tree in the kitchen."

"She's seen it."

"Then tell her which decorations you like."

Mrs. Porter offered her hand. Maisie slid off the chair, transferred both cookies into one fist, and took it.

As they passed me, she pointed at the box.

"Did you like the soft part?"

I crouched before I answered. It brought her face level with mine and made Nora take one involuntary step closer.

"I did. Where did you find it?"

"In Mommy's little tin."

"Do you know who it belonged to?"

"Uncle Leo."

Behind her, Nora stopped moving.

I kept my eyes on Maisie.

"Is Uncle Leo a friend of yours?"

"He held me when I was a baby. Mommy showed me."

"In a picture?"

She nodded. "I was very little. My head was funny."

Mrs. Porter pressed her lips together.

"Most babies have funny heads," I said.

"Not mine now."

"No. Not now."

She looked reassured and went with Mrs. Porter, leaving crumbs on my sleeve.

I stood.

Nora spoke before I could.

"She wasn't supposed to touch that tin."

"But she knew who the scarf belonged to."

"I told her stories. She asks about the people in our photographs."

"I'd like to see the photograph."

She looked toward the door.

"It's on my phone."

I stepped aside so she could reach her bag without passing close to me.

Her fingers were steady when she unlocked the screen. They began to shake as she scrolled.

She handed me the phone.

Luca sat in a narrow kitchen, a baby balanced against his chest. His mouth was open, caught halfway through saying something. The blue scarf lay over the back of his chair. A woman's hand entered the frame from one side, holding a bottle.

He looked happy.

I hadn't known he was capable of looking that happy during the last winter I had known him.

"When was this taken?"

"A few weeks before he disappeared."

"Where?"

"My apartment. I lived above a hardware store then."

I enlarged the picture until my brother's face filled the screen.

"You knew his real name."

"Not at first."

"When did you find out?"

"After he stopped coming. There was a photograph in the paper. Your father said he had stolen money."

She watched me carefully.

I gave her back the phone.

"Sit down, Nora."

"I'd rather stand."

I pulled out a chair for myself.

She seemed to find it harder to remain standing when I was seated. After a moment, she took the chair opposite me.

I set the red box between us.

"Tell me how you met him."

She rubbed a thumb along the edge of her phone.

"I worked nights at a café near the station. Maisie was two months old. My neighbor watched her until ten, and after that my manager let me keep her in the back room."

"Where was her father?"

"Gone before she was born."

She said it flatly, leaving no space for sympathy.

"Leo came in late," she continued. "Same table. Coffee he never finished. One night Maisie wouldn't stop crying. He asked if he could walk her around while I cleaned the counter."

"You let a stranger hold your baby?"

Her eyes sharpened.

"My manager knew him. I could see him the whole time. And I had been awake for twenty hours."

I looked down at the box. "I'm sorry. Go on."

She took a breath.

"He came back the next night. And the night after. Eventually he started helping us. Groceries. Medicine once. He said someone had helped him when he needed it."

I could hear Luca making that excuse. He never knew how to give anything without pretending he was settling an old debt.

"Was he living with you?"

"No."

The answer came quickly, but it wasn't all she wanted to say.

"He had a key," she added. "For emergencies. Sometimes he brought dinner when I was too tired to cook."

I didn't ask the next question.

She had already given me enough to understand that my brother had possessed a life I knew nothing about.

"Why didn't you tell me when you came to work here?"

"Because I thought your father might have hurt him."

The words landed without warning.

Nora gripped her phone harder but did not withdraw them.

"You believed that, and you took a job in his house?"

"I needed the pay. The agency sent me here a year after Leo vanished. At first I thought I could work for a week and leave if anything felt wrong."

"And then?"

"Then your father called me by my name on my first morning. Before Mrs. Porter introduced me."

I looked up.

"He knew you?"

"I don't know. He said I had a little girl and needed steady employment. He told me there was no reason for either of us to make trouble."

The grandfather clock in the hall struck five.

I had heard my father use that exact phrase with men who understood what would happen if they ignored him.

"Why stay?"

Nora looked at me as though I had asked why she needed air.

"Because he knew about my daughter. Because leaving wouldn't make him forget her. And because if Leo ever came back, I thought he might come here."

I sat with that.

Outside the window, someone switched on the garden lights. Snow shone against the glass.

"My father died eight months ago," I said.

"I know. I was here."

I remembered her carrying fresh water into his room, her head lowered while he complained about the noise of her shoes.

"You could have spoken to me then."

"You stood beside him when the paper called Leo a thief."

There was no accusation in her voice. She didn't need one.

I had stood there. Our father had handed a statement to his publicist, and I had told myself that challenging him before strangers would only make matters worse.

"Did Luca ever ask you to contact me?"

Nora's gaze dropped to the brass key.

"Nora."

"He talked about you."

"That isn't what I asked."

She pushed her chair back.

I stayed where I was.

"You can leave this room," I told her. "You can take Maisie home. But I'm asking you to help me understand what happened to my brother."

Her hand rested on the chair back.

For a long moment, she looked toward the hallway where her daughter had gone.

Then she turned back.

"He didn't just disappear," she said. "He came to my apartment afterward. He was bleeding."