Made the table Ren was sitting at.
He wrote that she might have been told he did not want her.
He did not accuse anyone by name.
He simply wrote that it was not true.
You were wanted.
Ren read the sentence again.
You have always been wanted by me, and by your mother.
Her throat tightened.
The letter explained that the cabin and land had been left to Ren.
Not to Garrett.
Not to Sandra.
To Ren.
The legal papers, Emmett said, were with an attorney in town.
They will tell you this place is a burden, he wrote. They may tell you it is worth nothing. Do not take anybody’s word for that, including mine. Go see the papers yourself.
Then came a sentence that caused Ren to set the letter down.
There are reasons certain people would rather you didn’t know what you own. Those reasons are in the locked box. The key is here somewhere. You’ll find it.
Ren looked toward the open hatch.
Dutch rested his chin on her boot.
The second page contained practical instructions.
The stove damper sticks. Tap the left side twice.
The spring behind the woodshed gives better water than the barrel. Follow the blue marks on the trees.
Do not eat from jars with green lids.
Burn standing deadwood first.
The short, ordinary advice hurt almost as much as the letter itself.
Emmett had planned for a day when Ren might arrive cold, hungry, and confused.
He had expected not to be there when she did.
And he had tried to care for her anyway.
Beneath the letter lay photographs.
Ren spread them on the table.
Her mother as a little girl sitting on the running board of a truck.
Sylvia laughing in a yellow dress.
Sylvia standing beside the same cabin.
And then a photograph that made Ren’s hands shake.
An older man with a gray mustache held a newborn baby against his chest.
On the back were three words.
Emmett and Ren.
Three weeks.
“He held me,” Ren whispered.
Dutch’s ears moved.
“He knew me.”
Ren had spent most of her childhood believing her mother’s father had rejected both of them.
Sandra had explained it when Ren was thirteen.
Your grandfather was a bitter man, sweetheart.
He cut your mother off.
After she died, we tried to contact him.
He wasn’t interested.
Ren remembered asking one question.
“Did he ever ask about me?”
Sandra had answered immediately.
“No.”
Garrett had looked at his dinner plate.
Now Ren stared at a photograph of herself asleep in Emmett’s arms.
Someone had removed that moment from her life.
Someone had decided she was better off believing it never existed.
In the bottom of the metal box lay a small brass key.
It did not fit the strongbox.
Ren tried.
Nothing.
The next morning, she began searching the cabin more carefully.
Behind an old burlap curtain on the back wall, she discovered a door.
Beyond it was a workshop.
The lean-to ran nearly the entire length of the cabin.
A heavy bench stood beneath dusty windows. Hand tools hung from outlines drawn on pegboard. A leather apron remained on a hook. Wood shavings still curled beneath the bench.
At the center stood an unfinished rocking chair.
Ren crossed the room slowly.
It was beautiful.
The seat and back were complete. The curved arms had been roughed out but never finished.
A paper tag hung from one side.
For Ren. For when she comes.
Finish the arms.
Ren remained there a long time.
A man she had been told did not want her had been making her a chair.
Not a valuable gift.
Not something impressive.
A chair.
Something built by hand for a future visit he apparently still believed might happen.
Under the workbench Ren found a child sized stool.
She turned it over.
Burned into the underside in uneven letters was her mother’s name.
SYLVIA.
Her mother had worked here.
Learned here.
Sat here.
Ren picked up one of Emmett’s chisels.
The handle was smooth from years of use.
She wrapped her hand around it.
For the first time since Garrett’s car disappeared down the road, the cabin did not feel empty.
Back at the table, she finally untied the bundle of letters from the cellar.
There were dozens.
Every envelope was addressed to her.
Miss Ren Sailor.
Her childhood address.
The house where she had lived from birth until the day Sandra and Garrett drove her up the mountain.
The postmarks went back years.
Birthdays.
Christmases.
Random months in between.
Every envelope had been returned.
RETURN TO SENDER.
NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS.
Ren stared at those words.
They were lies.
She had never moved.
On several newer envelopes, the words had been written by hand.
We do not want these. Return to sender.
Ren recognized Sandra’s handwriting immediately.
She had seen those same round letters on grocery lists, school forms, notes on the refrigerator.
Ren opened one envelope.
Then another.
Then another.
Emmett wrote about the mountain.
About snow.
About the dog.
About woodwork.
About her birthday.
One letter contained a two dollar bill and a pressed flower.
Buy yourself something foolish, he had written. Every girl should once in a while.
Another contained a photograph of the unfinished rocking chair.
Coming along. Slow work is usually good work.
Every letter had come back.
Emmett had kept them all.
Ren read until the lamp nearly went out.
What finally broke her was not the cruelty of what Sandra had done.
It was Emmett’s patience.
Year after year, he had written to a granddaughter who never answered.
Year after year, somebody had returned his letters.
And he had kept writing.