Chapter 15
“You’re my brother, Andrew,” I whispered against his collar. “I never stopped loving you. I just wanted you to come home.”
“I’m home, Mer,” he choked out, squeezing me tight. “I’m home.”
We stood on the porch for a long moment, while the snow fell softly around us, covering the yard in a clean, spotless white mantle.
Inside, the living room glowed with warm amber light. Maisie’s laughter drifted through the entryway, followed by the clink of silverware as Celeste set the dining room table.
I pulled back, wiped a stray tear from my cheek, and smiled at him.
“Wipe your feet, Andrew,” I said gently, pointing down at the mat. “Dinner is on the stove.”
Andrew laughed—a clear, boyish sound that sounded like the brother I remembered from thirty years ago. He wiped his boots thoroughly on the bristled mat, stepped over the threshold, and closed the heavy oak door against the winter cold.
Later that evening, after the chicken was carved, after the girls had eaten three cookies each and fallen asleep tangled together under a wool blanket on the sofa, I sat by the fireplace with a cup of hot cider.
On the mantle, resting side by side against the dark pine boughs, were our father’s two wooden stars. Maisie had polished them with a cloth before dinner, and Poppy had insisted on placing them right in the center, directly beneath Dad’s old brass clock.
I picked up the small brown package Andrew had given me on the porch and untied the red twine.
Inside, resting on a bed of tissue paper, was a small, hand-painted ceramic tile from an art studio in south Minneapolis. On the glazed surface, painted in clean, dark blue brushstrokes, were three simple words framed by a sprig of evergreen:
Built for the storm.
I turned the tile over. On the back, written in Andrew’s neat, deliberate architectural print, was a short inscription:
To Meredith. Thank you for holding the line until I learned how to stand. Love, Andrew.
I smiled, feeling a deep, abiding peace settle into my bones—the kind of peace that money can never buy, and pretense can never sustain.
I set the tile on the mantle beside the wooden stars.
Outside, the blizzard roared across the frozen plains, rattling the storm windows with sharp gusts of northern wind. But inside the old brick house, the radiators hissed their steady, quiet song, the fire burned bright and warm, and the foundations held fast against the night.