第1章 第4節 父の家
Her Father's House
Thomas Hale lived alone in a house at the edge of the city.
Arriving without warning, Nora found her father asleep in his chair.
He looked smaller than she remembered, his hands thin against the blanket.
He must be nearly eighty now, she thought, watching him from the door.
Waking suddenly, he stared at her as if she were a .
"You have your mother's face," he said, and his voice shook.
Nora placed the tape on the table, saying nothing at first.
He glanced at it once, and his whole body went .
That reaction, she knew, could not come from simple surprise.
"Where did you get this?" he asked, though he must have guessed.
Holding the arm of his chair, he tried to stand and failed.
"Someone sent it to me," Nora said. "It has Mother's voice on it."
"That is impossible," he answered, but he would not look at the tape.
A man telling the truth might be angry, she thought, not .
And her father, clearly, was , in a way she had never seen.
On the shelf behind him stood an old photograph, turned to the wall.
Following her , he crossed the room and pushed the face down.
"Let the dead rest, Nora," he said, his voice suddenly .
"You must not go looking for what is already finished and ."
"Then tell me what happened," she said, "and I might stop asking."
He shook his head, pressing his lips together like a locked door.
Whatever he was hiding, it could not be grief alone, she decided.
Grief does not turn a photograph to face a cold, blank wall.
Leaving the house, Nora carried the tape and one new .
Her father knew something, and that knowledge was eating him alive.
Fear, not , had lived in that room, and she had felt it clearly.