The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer Page A

was angry that the CEO could feel comfortable in, could view as his own, a bedroom I’d considered off-limits.
    We hadn’t had any rain yet, and dry leaves crunched under my feet as I moved to the edge of the driveway and found the trail that would take me to the low edge of our property, the site of our tree house. I’d navigated this trail hundreds of times—dark or day, it didn’t matter—and I wanted to believe I had the muscle memory to stride down it without a thought, but some unease overcame me and I went slowly, using my toes to explore the terrain of each step before committing my entire foot. Just before the trail gave out there was a steep pitch downward, and I was so dismayed by my hesitation that I took the last ten yards at a jog and then had to stop short so I wouldn’t snag myself on the rusty barbed wire fence dividing our property from the neighbors’.
    Our father had nailed short boards into the trunk of the tree, fora ladder up to the fort, and I tested them to see if they were holding. They were. The fort itself was about ten feet off the ground, and when I looked up I was a boy again, not sure I could manage the climb yet determined not to let either of my brothers see my hesitation or beat me to it.
    But the boards were thin. I set the outside of my right foot across the top of the lowest board, launched myself upward, and then had to wrap my arms around the tree to keep from falling back. I knew that to truly climb I had to lead with my hands, but I couldn’t remember how our fingers had gotten any purchase on the boards above us.
    I had never brought Sammy and Luke here. I’d thought of it but had decided to wait until they were older. I recalled how I’d sped through the Hardy boys earlier, turning the pages so I could get away, and a sob heaved out of me. Those boys, with their dirty necks: they were everything to me. Sammy, whose idea of heaven was being allowed to jump on our little backyard trampoline unsupervised. The trampoline was only a foot off the ground, but his point of reference was firmly rooted in the past, when he was a toddler and it had been a little dangerous, and so there he was, eight years old, exultant as a skydiver. Luke was five but in some ways more grown-up than Sammy. When I dropped him at a playdate he said, “Thanks for the ride, Dad,” breezy as a teenager. He thought kissing was for babies, so we kissed him only when he was asleep.
    I felt another sob trying to break through and gritted my teeth. I reached with my hand, but the board above my head was far too thin to grasp. I let go of the trunk for an instant and clapped my arms around it again, higher.
    Slowly, clumsily, I hauled myself up. My father had done this at my age, and with such a combination of grace and good humor. I remembered when we were building the fort, how he made it bothextraordinary—that we were, with our hands, bringing this structure into being—and also an everyday accomplishment, the kind of thing we could count on pulling off, if we worked hard, for the rest of our lives.
    I sat in the fort brushing wood debris from my chest and legs, then plucked a leaf from a nearby bay laurel for a dose of the medicinal smell. My father knew just how to sit up here with us: authoritative, benevolent, self-effacing. He was the opposite of the kind of father who makes his children into his own personal fan club—like my neighbor Jack Stillman, who I once heard say to his daughter, “Kelly, what’s the only major sport your star athlete of a dad has never played?” At which point Kelly, apparently the fan in charge of trivia, said, “Hockey!”
    I couldn’t recall my father complaining—ever. His burden was the burden of loneliness, his marriage having given him a houseful of people but no one his own age to talk to. His conversations with my mother revolved around whatever had taken hold of her mind most recently, whatever it was she wanted, and while on occasion she may have sat