Now they greeted him with broad smiles and open arms. “I’m so glad you came,” Dad said.
Although he seemed sincere and although they hugged him tightly, there was something awkward in the way the three of them stood there, immobile among the surging crowds. Mom gently stroked Miles’s cheek with a thumb as if checking to make sure he was real. Or maybe she was just tracing the lines in his skin, the evidence of time and sun and a life not always carefully lived over the last ten years.
“Honey,” Mom said, the word almost a sigh.
He tried for an easy excuse. “I’m tired. I had to be at the airport by six this morning.”
She nodded sagely, seeing right through him, and Dad gave Miles’s shoulder a squeeze. “Are you hungry? We can stop for an early dinner.”
Miles shook his head. “No. let’s just go ho— To Kemken.” Because home wasn’t the right word for it. Not quite.
They had to wait for his suitcase, a slightly battered relic he’d picked up years ago at a Goodwill store and which had served him well throughout his travels. One look told him that the airline baggage handlers had obviously not been kind to it, based on the new dings and bulges. Dad offered to help carry, but Miles refused, slinging his duffel over a shoulder and clutching the suitcase in one hand.
His parents had a new vehicle: an SUV. That surprised him at first, until he realized he’d been expecting them to drive the same pickup that Dad had owned a decade earlier. The SUV was big—with enough room to haul a lot of cousins—and fancy, with gadgetry that looked as if it belonged in a jet airplane. Miles hadn’t driven much over the past years and had never owned a car; he’d lost track of the latest technology.
Traffic crawled as they worked their way out of town, giving Miles and his parents plenty of time to sit in strained silence. It was worse than being with strangers, because at least strangers wouldn’t expect conversation. Finally Dad cleared his throat. “Do you like living in New Orleans?”
“It’s okay.”
“You’ve been able to find good work?”
That wasn’t a rebuke; Miles knew that, but he hunched his shoulders anyway. “Street art. I sell paintings and draw caricatures in the French Quarter.”
“So you can support yourself with your art. That’s great, son.”
Support was probably putting it too strongly, but Miles didn’t disagree. “I get by. I have a pretty good location—lots of tourists walking by.”
Mom and Dad both made approving noises. Mom, who was driving, glanced at Miles via the rearview mirror. “It’s a very interesting city, isn’t it? Lots of history. And good food, although you don’t look as if you’ve been eating enough of it.”
“Mom.”
She clucked her tongue. “I’m sorry, honey. I promised myself I wouldn’t criticize.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of that. What else might she be saying if she wasn’t trying to hold her tongue? Since he didn’t really want to know, he changed the subject. “How’s everyone doing? Grandma emails me sometimes and she sounds good.”
Dad turned in his seat to nod at Miles. “She’s fine. Kurt and Tanya had another baby—a boy this time. Belle’s going to graduate from U Washington in the spring, probably magna cum laude. She’s heading for grad school. Aiden opened a new bakery downtown and—”
“Mary Joy’s Bakery closed,” Mom interrupted. “She retired. So Aiden took over the space. He totally remodeled it, and now he’s selling artisanal breads and cute little pastries with French names. He put in some seating too, and now everyone wants to sit there with their fancy coffees and treats.”
His parents went on like that for a long time, updating him on various cousins and other relatives. Miles listened and made the right monosyllabic responses, his eyes trained on the green slopes of the Coast Range. He’d missed hills; Louisiana was as flat as a table. And he was happy for his relatives’ successes and sad over their misfortunes, but he didn’t feel connected to any of them. It was as if all these familiar names belonged to characters in a movie he’d once seen.
The drive from Portland to Kemken took over two hours. He dozed a bit toward the end, allowing his parents’ quiet conversation and the hum of the tires to lull him into a liminal state. He was aware of what was going on around him but wasn’t alert enough to do more than lean into the plush leather seats.
But then a name pulled him fully awake.
“…help Remy remodel the kitchen….” Mom was saying.
Miles couldn’t help himself; his response escaped before he could stop it. “Remy?”
Dad shot him a quick look. “He does almost all the maintenance nowadays. Even some of the gardening. Honestly, though, I don’t see much of him around the house. He’s always too busy to socialize, he says.”
“Oh.”
Miles hadn’t asked about Remy even once over the past decade, but of course that hadn’t made Remy disappear. And where would he go anyway? Surely few places on earth would be as welcoming to him as the bizarre Thorsen household, where oddities were expected.
Probably picking up on Miles’s mood, Mom said, “Well, I’m glad you’re arriving when you are. We could use another pair of hands to help us set up. And none of us has ever been able to arrange the greenery as nicely as you can. We just don’t have your artist’s eye.”
“I’ll be happy to help.” He concentrated on fir boughs—great heavy ones that would scent the rooms—and massive wreaths, and strategically placed pinecones that would add to the ambience without getting in anyone’s way. When he was a kid, the family had refused to use store-bought decorations or anything smacking of modernity, instead stringing cranberries and popcorn and setting out bowls of clove-studded orange pomanders. Miles and the other children used to complain a bit, some of his cousins wishing for flashing lights and the like. But Miles had secretly loved the old-fashioned nature of the décor, and he’d enjoyed helping create the displays.
All of this was much better than remembering Remy—or thinking about having to face him again soon.
Miles spent the last thirty minutes of the trip carefully not thinking about Remy at all.
When Niels Thorsen came to Kemken in 1872, he bought a huge swath of land several miles inland from the Pacific. It cost him almost nothing. He built himself a modest two-room cabin on a hillside. Then he continued cutting down trees. Pretty soon Niels had a fortune, and not long after that he had a wife, Anna, and a growing brood of children. Niels and Anna had added on to their little abode, and then added on again, and when they decided in the 1880s that they wanted a mansion, they had it constructed right over and around the original building.
The lumber business had eventually waned in Kemken as the number of old-growth trees dwindled, but the Thorsens had continued to thrive, making their way into every corner of Kemken life. They owned shops and restaurants, they bought farms in the valley, they operated hotels for tourists who preferred to avoid the bustle of the oceanside towns, they taught in the schools, and they practiced medicine and dentistry and law.
And all along, the core of the Thorsen family remained in the mansion, adding rooms and modern amenities, building more turrets and porches and gardens. Everyone in town called it the Castle.