I don’t know which door to use. Should I mount the three cement steps to the front door and ring the doorbell like a guest? Should I go through the one-car carport and open the side door and call out: “I’m home!” like a family member? As it turns out, Adele spots me and opens the front door, pushes wide the complaining screen door and stares at me. “It took you long enough. Come on in.”

Now I know I’m home.

17

“Wipe your feet. I’ve just had the rugs cleaned.” The front door opens directly into the living room. It’s different from my memory of white walls and fake Colonial-style furniture. Three of the walls are a pale pink and the fourth—the narrowest, at the far end of the room—is the designated accent wall, as it’s painted a weird persimmon color. The furniture is modern; the couch and chairs have huge soft cushions that could swallow a child. The only thing in this room that I recognize is the antique oak sideboard, which is too big for the dining area in this house, but which once fit perfectly in the dining room in my mother’s house. It’s placed against the persimmon wall, with a collection of photographs in chunky frames displayed on it. Even from a distance I can see that all of the pictures are of Paul’s kids. It looks like he has a dozen, but I realize that they’re the same two, replicated over and over at different stages of their lives—as infants, as toddlers, in grade school photos, in middle school graduation pictures. There’s no picture of Tony. Perhaps I’ve never sent one.

Adele is standing in the archway that leads into the kitchen, waiting for me.

“Shall I put my stuff in my room?”

Adele looks at me like I’ve asked for money. “I assumed you’d be staying in a hotel. We don’t have room here. I never suggested…”

“I can’t afford a hotel.”

She doesn’t answer me.

I drop my duffel bag, travel-worn and grubby, right on her cream-colored sofa. I want to ask why I can’t use Paul’s room. I know that the closet that was my space has long since been retrofitted into the walk-in closet it originally was designed to be. I decide to drop the subject for the moment. There are far more important questions to ask. “Where’s Dad?”

My stepmother pins a look on me. “Paul’s in with him now. When he comes out, you can go in.”

“I’ll go in now. I just came two thousand miles to see him.”

“You will wait here.”

I’ve been through the tortures of the damned to get here to see my father and this woman is going to prevent me with four words? “Give me one good reason I can’t go in. He’s my father.”

“He gets upset if too many people are in there.”

“You mean that you do.” I turn around and go through the living room to the short hallway that leads to the two bedrooms. As provoked as I am, I hesitate before entering the hallway. I stand in the archway and listen to the voices coming from one of the bedrooms. I realize that my father isn’t in his bedroom at all, but in what was once Paul’s. The voices aren’t live; they’re coming from a television show. The canned laughter gives it away. I listen harder. If Paul is in there, he isn’t saying anything. Then I hear a pair of chuckles, a shared amusement at whatever’s on the screen, and I have a flash of childish jealousy.