The Morning After

Everyone in town blamed me for what happened to Mr. Seifi.

They never said it to my face, of course. They'd smile politely in the grocery store or wave from their porches. But I could tell what they were thinking. They thought I'd scared the old man away.

They're wrong.

Mr. Seifi lived next door for twelve years. Every morning at exactly 7:15, he'd sit on his porch with a chipped blue mug and feed the sparrows. We'd talk about baseball, the weather, and whether the tomatoes would survive another heat wave. He wasn't lonely. He had me.

The police came on a Thursday. They asked when I'd last seen him.

"Yesterday morning," I said.

They exchanged a glance that annoyed me. One of them wrote something in a little notebook.

"Is something funny?" I asked.

The younger officer hesitated.

"Mr. Seifi's mailbox has been overflowing for three weeks."

I laughed because it was such a ridiculous thing to say.

"No, it hasn't."

He didn't answer.

They searched the house anyway. It was unnecessary. Mr. Seifi wasn't there because he'd gone to visit his sister. He'd mentioned it over coffee. Or maybe it was lemonade. Either way, he'd told me.

The officers looked through every room.

"See?" I said. "He's not here."

Instead of agreeing, they stared at the layer of dust covering the kitchen table.

The older officer picked up a framed photograph.

"Did you know him well?"

"Better than anyone."

"Interesting."

He turned the frame toward me.

It showed the house next door, but the porch was empty.

"Wrong picture," I said.

He frowned.

"It's the only one we found."

People in this town love to invent stories. Soon they were saying Mr. Seifi had lived alone for years. That he barely spoke to anyone. That his wife had died long ago and he'd become a recluse.

As if they knew him.

I stopped correcting them after a while.

One afternoon, I decided to clean up his porch before he came back. The blue mug wasn't there anymore. Neither was the bird feeder.

Probably packed for the trip.

I sat in his chair and waited.

The sparrows landed at my feet, looking confused.

"You'll see," I told them. "He never misses feeding time."

They flew away.

A week later, I found myself standing in the public library, searching through old newspapers. I wanted proof.

There was an article about Mr. Seifi.

I smiled.

Then I started reading.

LOCAL MAN FOUND DEAD IN HOME

The date was four years ago.

I checked it three times.

Wrong newspaper.

There had to be another explanation.

The librarian noticed me staring at the page.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"This article is incorrect."

She looked at the headline.

"Oh. Mr. Seifi." She nodded sadly. "I remember that. Such a shame."

"No," I said. "I had breakfast with him yesterday."

She didn't laugh.

Instead, she asked if I had someone she could call.

I left without answering.

That evening, I carried two mugs onto the porch.

One for me.

One for him.

The chair beside mine stayed empty.

The sky darkened.

The sparrows never came.

I told myself they were simply late.

Tomorrow, I thought.

Tomorrow everything would make sense.

Tomorrow Mr. Seifi would explain why everyone had decided to pretend he was dead.

Tomorrow he would sit in the empty chair, lift his chipped blue mug, and ask whether the tomatoes had survived the heat.

And when he did, everyone would finally realize they had been wrong.

I only wish I could remember why his voice was beginning to sound so much like my own.

The next morning, I woke before sunrise.

Mr. Seifi hated sleeping in.

I poured two cups of coffee, careful not to overfill his. He always complained that I made it too strong, though he drank every drop anyway. I carried both mugs outside.

The second cup was still warm when I set it on the empty chair.

"Running late?" I asked.

The silence wasn't unusual. Some mornings he liked to watch the birds before speaking.

I waited.

A truck pulled into the driveway.

A woman stepped out holding a cardboard box. She looked about my age, though the gray in her hair caught the morning light.

"You must be Victor," she said.

I didn't answer.

She looked at the empty chair.

"I've been trying to find you."

"You've got the wrong house."

"No." She sighed. "This is exactly the right one."

She held out her hand.

"I'm Amanda. Ali Seifi was my father."

I stared at her.

"No, you're not."

Her smile faded.

"I know this is difficult."

"It isn't difficult," I snapped. "It's impossible."

She looked at the untouched coffee.

"You still bring him breakfast."

"He'll be here."

She glanced toward the porch next door. Workers were measuring the windows.

"They're getting the house ready to sell."

"No, they're fixing the gutters."

"They're emptying it."

I laughed.

"They can't empty a house someone lives in."

Amanda opened the cardboard box.

Inside were old photographs.

She handed me one.

There was Mr. Seifi, younger than I remembered, standing beside a little girl with missing front teeth.

Amanda.

Another photograph showed him holding a fishing rod.

Another showed him beside a woman with bright eyes and a wide smile.

His wife.

I searched each picture for myself.

I wasn't in any of them.

"These don't prove anything," I said.

"They're family photos."

"Exactly."

Amanda reached deeper into the box.

"I found these in his desk."

She pulled out a stack of letters tied together with faded blue ribbon.

The top envelope had my name written across it.

Victor.

I frowned.

"He never gave these to me."

"I don't think he could."

She untied the ribbon and unfolded the first letter.

The handwriting was unmistakably his.

Victor came by again today.

I smiled.

"See?"

She kept reading.

He still sets two cups on the porch every morning.

My smile disappeared.

The doctors say I shouldn't encourage him. They say correcting him only makes the grief worse. I don't know what's kinder anymore.

Amanda stopped.

"There's more."

"I don't want to hear it."

She continued anyway.

He still thinks his brother is alive. He talks to him every day. Sometimes he introduces me to him. I always shake the empty air because Victor smiles when I do.

The words blurred.

"My brother?" I whispered.

Amanda looked at me carefully.

"Your brother died before my father did."

"No."

"You were very close."

"No."

"My father looked after you after the accident."

I shook my head so hard the porch seemed to tilt.

"I don't have a brother."

Amanda didn't argue.

She simply handed me another photograph.

This one showed two boys.

One was me.

The other...

He had my eyes.

My crooked smile.

One arm slung over my shoulder.

On the back, in neat handwriting, were four words.

Victor and Tristan, Summer 2009.

A memory slipped through before I could stop it.

A rainy road.

Screeching tires.

Someone shouting my name.

Then nothing.

I dropped the photograph.

The coffee beside the empty chair had gone cold.

For the first time in years, I looked at the chair and wondered whether it had ever been occupied at all.

Amanda didn't rush to fill the silence.

She picked up the photograph and brushed the dirt from the corner before placing it gently in my hands again.

"I think," she said quietly, "you should keep it."

Then she walked back to her truck.

"I'll be here tomorrow if you want to talk."

The engine started, and she drove away.

I sat alone on the porch until the sun dipped below the trees.

The coffee in both mugs had gone cold.

That night, I couldn't sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, another memory slipped through the cracks.

Tristan laughing because I couldn't catch a baseball.

Mr. Seifi waving from his porch the first day I moved in.

A funeral.

Not one funeral.

Two.

I remembered standing in a black suit beside a polished wooden casket. I remembered refusing to look inside. I remembered Mr. Seifi resting a hand on my shoulder and saying, "You don't have to be brave all the time."

For years, I'd forgotten those words.

Or maybe I hadn't forgotten.

Maybe I'd simply moved them to someone else's story.

The next morning, I made only one cup of coffee.

My hands hesitated before reaching for the second mug.

I stood there for nearly a minute.

Finally, I put it back in the cabinet.

Outside, the empty chair waited.

It looked smaller than I remembered.

Less like a place someone might return to.

More like a place someone had once been.

I carried my coffee across the lawn and sat in it anyway.

"I'm angry with you," I said.

No answer came.

"I needed you longer."

The breeze stirred the leaves overhead.

For the first time, I didn't mistake it for a reply.

Amanda returned that afternoon.

She found me sorting through the box of photographs.

"There he is," I said, pointing to one. "That's the day we planted the maple tree."

She smiled.

"It got huge."

"I remember."

Another picture showed Mr. Seifi holding up a pie he'd burned.

"He blamed the oven," I said.

Amanda laughed.

"He blamed that oven for everything."

I laughed too.

It felt strange.

Not because it hurt.

Because it didn't.

We spent hours sharing stories.

Some were hers.

Some were mine.

Together they fit better than the memories I'd invented alone.

A week later, the movers arrived.

I helped carry boxes out of Mr. Seifi's house.

The last thing left on the porch was the old wooden chair.

The foreman asked if I wanted it.

I looked at it for a long time.

"Yes," I said.

"But not for that porch."

I carried it home and placed it beneath the maple tree we'd planted years ago.

Not as a place to wait.

As a place to remember.

The sparrows came back the following spring.

I scattered a handful of birdseed across the grass.

"Your breakfast is late," I said.

They didn't care. They only knew there was food and morning light.

Sometimes that's enough.

I sat beneath the maple tree with a single cup of coffee.

That was enough for both of us.