The House of Memories Read Online Free Page B

Felix Lucas Fox O’Hanlon, I heard nothing back. I was too exhausted and too dizzy with love to mind, I think. Perhaps he was away. Two days later, there was a knock at our Canberra apartment door. Aidan told me the postman could barely carry the parcel inside, it was so huge. It was a five-foot-high toy fox.
Thank you,
Lucas’s handwritten note said.
I am overjoyed for so many reasons.
    After that, Lucas started writing to Felix more than me. I pretended to be hurt, but I loved it.
    Dear Felix,
he would e-mail.
How is the sleeping going? Have you been told that Felix is the Latin word for lucky or happy?
    Felix wrote back to him too, of course, channeled through me or Aidan. He was very articulate for a baby and very appreciative of the new series of Astounding Facts for Infants.
    Dear Lucas,
    Yes, I am sleeping and also feeding very well, thank you for asking—I have already put on 800 grams. Thank you also for the link to the Large Hadron Collider Web site. I look forward to seeing it for myself one day.
    Love for now from your grandnephew, Felix.
    We sent Lucas dozens of photos of Felix. Lucas sent Felix books. Boxes of them. Not just picture books either. He sent Dickens, Tolstoy, Austen, Homer. . . . His goal, he told us, was for Felix to have a complete library of the classics by the time he started school. At the rate the books were arriving, Felix would have had a full library of the classics by the time he started kindergarten. For Felix’s first birthday, Lucas sent him another five-foot-high toy fox. To keep the other fellow company, he said.
    A month after that, Lucas surprised us—delighted us—with a spur-of-the-moment visit to Canberra. He stayed for less than a week, too short, but enough time for us to take dozens of photographs of him and Felix together. Serendipitously, his visit coincided with one of Charlie’s trips back to Australia.
    I can still picture one afternoon in particular. We were having an informal lunch at our apartment, the balcony doors wide open, the sun streaming in, a light breeze in the air. There in our small living room were my four favorite people in the world—Aidan, Lucas, Charlie and Felix. There was a moment, a beautiful, sweet moment, when I took a photograph with perfect timing: Charlie making a corny joke, Lucas throwing back his head and laughing, Aidan smiling and shaking his head, and there, in Aidan’s arms, Felix, giving his big, gummy, delighted smile and kicking his legs at the same time, as if the smile alone wasn’t enough to signify how much fun he was having. In the photograph, his legs are just a blur. At the time, I remember a feeling, like a dart of something, that felt like light, a warm feeling, a rush of it. I realized afterward it was joy.
    After Lucas went home again, the e-mail between him and Felix increased. There were intense discussions about communism versus capitalism and the merits of cricket compared to football. The books kept arriving. Poetry from Byron, Yeats and Wordsworth. The Spot books. The Mr. Men tales. Lucas was no literary snob. Aidan had to put up another bookshelf in Felix’s room. Felix e-mailed Lucas to say thank you and to remark that his bedroom looked more like a library these days.
    Wonderful!
Lucas e-mailed back.
A boy can never have too many books. Wait till you see what I’m sending you for your second birthday. . . .
    But then—
    When—
    Afterward—
    After it happened, as soon as Lucas got my message in the middle of his night, he wrote to me. On paper, not by e-mail. It arrived by courier. One line of writing, on thick parchment paper, with the fox drawing on the letterhead.
    My dearest Ella, I am devastated for you both. I am here if you need me. Lucas.
    It said everything I needed to hear. It made me cry for hours. I had already been crying for hours.
    Almost twenty months had passed since that day. I wasn’t arriving in London unannounced. Lucas had e-mailed a fortnight earlier:
Where are you now,