Marcus stood up and clinked his glass with a fork. Everyone turned — the cousins, the nieces, the neighbor who'd come because she'd been invited and didn't know how to decline.
"Eighty years," Marcus said. He held the glass toward the end of the table where their father sat. "Eighty years and the man still won't admit he can't parallel park."
Laughter. Their father smiled the way he always smiled when he was the subject — not quite committed to it, like he was borrowing someone else's amusement.
Marcus told the hiking story. Three weeks on the Appalachian Trail before he'd met their mother. The blisters, the wrong boots, the thunderstorm in Virginia where he'd sheltered under a bridge with two strangers and shared a can of beans.
Cora watched her father listen to the story of his own life. He nodded at the right moments. His hands were folded in his lap — large hands, the knuckles swollen now, the fingers slightly bent in the way the doctor said was just what happened.
Marcus told the guitar story. The campfire at Moose Lake, the summer he was ten. Their father singing something about a river while the fire popped and Marcus tuned the strings the way he'd been shown.
"He had a voice," Marcus said. "He really did."
Their father looked at his plate. A piece of cake on it, half-eaten. He ate everything slowly now — deliberate, careful, as though each bite required planning.
Cora was twelve years younger than Marcus. By the time she arrived, the guitar was in the closet. Her father was the man who drove ten under the speed limit with both hands on the wheel. Who ate rye toast every morning with the crusts cut off. Who answered most questions with "fine" and fell asleep by nine watching the news.
She'd loved him. She wanted that clear, even to herself. She'd loved the quiet, the crusts, the careful driving. The way he folded his newspaper into a square small enough for his jacket pocket. She'd loved the man who picked her up from school without speaking and drove her home through streets he knew so well he didn't look.
But she hadn't known the singer.
After the toast, in the kitchen, loading plates into the dishwasher. Marcus rinsing, Cora stacking.
"You don't remember any of that," he said. Not a question.
"I don't."
"He was different when I was small. Happy. Loud. He filled a room."
Their father was in the living room. Cora could see him through the doorway — sitting in the chair by the window, hands in his lap, watching the yard. He fit the chair exactly. He didn't fill it.
"We're describing the same person at different times," Marcus said. He meant it as a bridge. As if continuity were the thing that mattered.
Cora set a plate in the rack. "His feet are an eleven now. He was a ten."
Marcus looked at her.
"People change size," she said. "They don't fit the same shoe."
He turned back to the sink. The water ran over his hands. Through the kitchen window, the light was getting thin.
In the living room, their father shifted in his chair. The newspaper was on the side table, folded into its small square. He'd read it already, the way he did every morning, completely and without comment.
"I just want you to know he was happy once," Marcus said.
"I believe you," Cora said.
She did. The way you believe in weather from a city you've never visited. True, verified, and no use at all.