“The house is quiet enough without selling the walls, Robert,” I said.
I adjusted my silver reading glasses, slide-ticking them up the bridge of my nose to keep the details of the canvas in focus. The five women in the oil painting stared back at me, their faces rendered in my father’s heavy, deliberate brushstrokes, each one wearing a different shade of faded blue.
“It is a six-figure asset sitting in an empty room,” Robert said, turning quickly to face me. “You are living on a school librarian’s pension in a house with a thirty-year-old furnace and ninety thousand miles on the Buick.”
“He painted those five women to tell a story, not to pay your debts, Robert.”
My brother stopped tapping his keys. He took a short step toward the hearth, his face tightening as he looked at the canvas.
“You always think you are the keeper of his soul,” he said.
“I am the keeper of the house,” I said.
He did not wait for me to set down the dusting cloth. He crossed the rug in three long strides, his heavy boots leaving deep prints in the wool before he stormed out, leaving the front door to click shut behind him.
