The Inheritance of Dust

The Day After

My father has been in the ground for less than twenty-four hours and his house has already forgotten how to hold me.

I woke up to the sound of my door opening. No knock. it just opened.

The light that came in was that thin, white light you get the morning after a funeral, when the world is supposed to feel different but stubbornly doesn't. The sun was up. Cars were passing on the road outside. Someone, somewhere, was mowing a lawn. It offended me.

For a second, I didn't remember. For a perfect, terrible second, I thought Dad was downstairs in his workshop, burning toast, humming that off-key song he always hummed when he was trying to fix something. Then I saw the black suit hanging over the back of my chair, still smelling faintly of wet earth from the burial, and it all came back.

My bags were packed. That was the first thing that was wrong. My old duffel bag, the one with the broken zipper that Dad said he would fix and never did, was zipped — or as zipped as it could be — and standing by the door. My laptop, my two other shirts, my book of workshop sketches Dad gave me when I was thirteen. Everything I owned in this house was in that bag. Although, I wasn't the one that packed it.

Chase had.

He was standing in the doorway, like he owned the frame.

He was already dressed. Of course he was. Chase Croft was never undressed. Even when we were kids, he woke up looking ironed. Yesterday at the burial he wore a three-piece black suit that probably cost what I pay in rent for six months. Today it was a different black suit, but the same energy. He was looking at his phone, scrolling with his thumb, like evicting me was something he could do in between emails.

"You need to be out by noon, Jack," he said without looking up.

His voice was exactly the same as it was when we were twelve and he told me I couldn't play with his friends because I was "too quiet" and quiet made people uncomfortable.

I sat up. The small bed creaked. This room used to be a storage closet. When I came to live here after my mom left, Vivian had them clear out the paint cans and put a single bed in here for me. She said it was too cozy. She said I didn't need a big room because I was a small boy. I was ten. I'm twenty-six now. I'm still in the small room. The damp spot on the ceiling has grown from the size of a coin to the size of my hand. I used to track it like a calendar.

"This was Dad's house," I said. My voice was hoarse. I hadn't spoken since I said "amen" at the graveside.

Chase finally looked up from his phone. And he smiled. It was not a mean smile. It was worse. It was a patient smile. The kind you give to a waiter who got your order wrong.

"Was," he said. "That's the keyword you missed, little brother. Was his house. As of yesterday at 3:14 p.m., when the coroner signed the paper, it became my Mom's house. Legally. Actually, technically, it will be mine once Mom decides to gift it to me, which we both know is going to happen before Christmas. So. Noon. The estate agents are coming at one to take pictures. Mom doesn't want your..."

He waved his hand vaguely at my existence. At the duffel. At the photo taped to my wall.

"...stuff in the shots. It brings down the tone."

My stuff. My stuff was one photo. One photo of me and Dad in his workshop, both of us covered in grease, holding up a small wooden birdhouse we had built together. I was eight in that photo. My front teeth were missing. Dad's arm was around my shoulder. It's the only photo I have of him where he's actually looking at the camera and smiling with his teeth.

Chase stepped forward and grabbed the handle of my duffel. He didn't lift it. He dragged it. The bottom scraped against the floorboards. That sound went straight through my teeth.

I stood up. I'm taller than Chase, actually. An inch or two. But I've never felt taller. He has that way of making you feel like you're standing in a hole.

"Get your hands off my bag, Chase."

"Ooooh," he said, mock impressed. "He speaks. And he's angry. What are you going to do, Jack? Cry? Write in your little notebook? Go hide in the workshop like you always did?"

That workshop. He said it like it was an insult. For me, it was the only room in this house where I could breathe. Dad's workshop at the back of the garden, smelling of wood shavings and old oil and metal. Where he let me sit on a stool and watch him for hours without ever telling me to go away. Where he taught me how to hold a hammer. Where he taught me that if you want to know if something is valuable, you don't look at how shiny it is, you look at how it's put together.

Chase was still dragging my bag. He was almost at the door.

That was when Vivian appeared.

I don't know how she does it. You never hear Vivian Croft come. She just appears, like the house tells her where you are.

She was in the hallway, in a black silk dress. Her hair was perfect. Her makeup was perfect. At the burial yesterday, while Sloane sobbed loudly enough for the entire cemetery to hear and Chase stood stoically like a statue of a grieving son, Vivian had not shed one tear. She held a small black handkerchief and dabbed at dry eyes. Later I heard her tell one of the wives, "It was expected, darling. His heart. He worked too hard."

She looked at Chase first, then at me, then at the bag on the floor.

"Chase, darling, leave it," she said.

Her voice was soft. It was always soft. That was the most terrifying thing about Vivian. She never shouted. She never had to. She could cut your throat with a whisper and make you thank her for the haircut.

Chase immediately let go. "Mom, he needs to—"

"I know what he needs to do," she said, still in that same soft voice. She looked at me now. Really looked at me. And I felt that familiar feeling, the feeling I've had since I was ten years old in this house. The feeling of being examined and found... irrelevant.

"Jack, sweetheart," she said. "I know you are grieving in your own way. But Chase is right. We do need to prepare the house. However. Attorney Brown is coming at four o'clock for the reading of the will. Your father was very specific in his last instructions. He said, and I quote, 'All members of my household must be present.' That includes you."

She said "includes you" like it was a legal loophole she was annoyed to have to honor.

The reading of the will. I had almost forgotten. Dad had a will. Of course he had a will. He had a will for everything. He had a labeled will for his screwdrivers.

Chase scoffed. "Mom, he doesn't need to be here for that. It's just a formality. Dad didn't have anything to leave him."

"Your father thought otherwise," Vivian said, and for a split second, something flashed in her eyes. Annoyance. Not at Chase. At my father. Even dead, he was still making her do things she didn't want to do. "So Jack will stay until four. After the reading, he will leave. Is that understood, Jack?"

I nodded. What else was I supposed to do? Where else was I supposed to go? My apartment across town had a leak and no hot water. This cold, perfect house was still the closest thing to a home I had ever known, even if it never loved me back.

"Good boy," she said. It made my skin crawl. I was twenty-six.

"Four o'clock," Chase repeated, pointing a finger at me like I was a dog. "Then you're gone. For good this time."

They left together, Chase following her like he always did, down the grand staircase that Dad had built with his own hands when he was young and still believed hard work could make a family love you.

I sat back down on the small bed. My bag was where Chase had dropped it, halfway in the hallway, like it had been kicked out.

I didn't move for a long time. I could hear the house waking up without my father in it. It sounded lighter. Emptier. Sloane's voice floated up from the kitchen, bright and alive. She was on the phone.

"No, like, literally, I'm so traumatized, we buried him yesterday and I have to be at this will reading thing today. I know. I know. I had to cancel my nail appointment. Vivian is being so extra..."

She was laughing. She was actually laughing. The day after we put our father in the ground. Or, my father. They were my step siblings.

I thought about Dad. Not the man in the coffin yesterday, who looked small and waxen and not like him at all. But my dad. The dad who would come into my little storage-room bedroom after Vivian and the kids had gone to sleep and say, "You still up, Jack-boy? Come on, I need a second pair of eyes." And I'd follow him to the workshop in my pajamas, and he'd show me what he was working on. A new joint. A new design. He never talked to Chase about those things. Chase didn't care how things worked. He only cared how much they cost.

I looked at the clock. 8:17 a.m. Almost eight hours until four.

I had eight hours to be a ghost in a house that was already trying to exorcise me.

I spent them in the workshop. It was the only place I could think.

The workshop was at the far end of the garden, behind the pool that Sloane used and I was never allowed to use. It was locked. It had been locked since Dad got sick. I had the key. I was the only one besides Dad who had the key. He gave it to me three years ago and said, "Don't lose it, Jack-boy. Everything important is in here."

Inside, it smelled like him. That smell hit me harder than the burial did. Oil, sawdust, coffee that had been left out too long. His workbench was exactly as he left it. Tools hung in perfect order. He was a messy man in life, but his tools were always ordered. "A man who can't find his tools can't find his mind," he used to say.

And in the middle of the floor, under a dusty white sheet, was something.

It wasn't there before. I would have noticed.

It was small. Square. About the size of a microwave. The sheet was new. Vivian hated white sheets. She said they showed dust.

My heart started beating too fast. I pulled the sheet off.

It was a box. A dirty, old, rusty box. The metal was flaking. The hinges were orange with rust. There was a cheap padlock on it, also rusted shut. It looked like someone had pulled it out of a river.

On top of it, taped with yellowed scotch tape, was a piece of paper. Fresh paper. With my name written on it in handwriting I knew better than my own.

JACK.

I knelt down. My hands were shaking.

From the main house, I could hear Vivian calling my name.

"Jack! Attorney Brown is here early! Get in here now! And for God's sake, put on a decent shirt!"

It was 3:42 p.m.

I stared at the rusty box that my father had left in the middle of his workshop, just for me.

And for the first time since he died, I felt like he was trying to tell me something.