The corner of his mouth twitches in a smirk, just barely contained. “It’s selective memory. They wanted to help you. Did they?”

“Some. I had no idea he went to bat to help the Eigers’ son get into Harvard. Why didn’t he tell us that?”

“Maybe because he didn’t go to bat to help you get in there. Maybe because he was too busy making your life miserable.”

I want to scold him for speaking ill of the dead, but if his bitterness is loyalty to me, how can I fight that? “Maybe he did talk about it,” I whisper. “Maybe I just don’t remember.”

But Jack’s eyes have drifted off. I follow them through the front hall to the living room, where they focus on Dad’s chair. It still bears the imprint of his body. None of us fluffed its cushions, not even Lina. Incredibly, as though there was a sign with Dad’s name, it stayed empty all day.

“Hard to believe he won’t sit there again,” I say, to which Jack threads a piece of hair behind my ear, then snakes an arm around my shoulder and tugs me close. It isn’t until he speaks again that I realize I’m comforting him, as much as the other way around.

His voice is reverent. “For me, it was the dressing table where my mother did her hair. I used to hate it, because when she sat there, she was getting ready to leave.” I look up at him, but the memory has him in full grip. “The chair was a stool with a low back. It fit all the way underneath. When I was six, or eight or nine, I don’t know, I used to pull it out, like she had just left it and would be back. Dad pushed it in. I pulled it out again.” Taking a deep breath, he returns to me, looking down with eyes that are sad and resigned. “Yeah, it’s hard to believe. All of it.”

I brush my cheek against his shirt collar, then draw back and touch it in awe. He had worked early that morning, but had showered and changed before coming here. A pressed shirt and slacks? So not like the Jack I remember, but apparently like the Jack he is now, because there are no price tags in sight.

He cocks his head at the empty chair. “Tell me what you feel.”

“You, first. About him.” If this is a moment of truth, I want it all. There was no love lost between my father and Jack. Jack has a right to blame Tom Aldiss for that empty dressing table. I’m okay with his being happy Dad is dead. Isn’t that poetic justice?

But “happy” isn’t the word he uses when his eyes fall to mine. “Relieved.”

“Really.” Milder than I thought. “That he’s dead?”