The morning after the upheaval of the night protests, the city was surreally quiet. Waking in the parking garage, Eleanor lifted herself out of the nest of old coats and her backpack on the floor of the backseat. As she drove away from the one sanctuary she could think of as streets were shut down, Eleanor saw evidence of the night’s violence in the strewn litter, broken glass, and the watchful police presence. An odd number of people were still milling about but any gathering dwindled as she rode out of the downtown area.

In the automatic haze that half-sleep delivers, Eleanor followed the directions scribbled on a napkin from the meeting last weekend that completely wrecked her peace of mind—a chance meeting that wrecked her even more than last night’s chaotic melee. In fact, her mind wandered to this mystery last night even as they ducked glass bottles smashing into store windows they ran past.

She parked far down the street after passing the house perched on a rise just before the more congested part of the neighborhood. Hurrying up the street and climbing the steep stairs to the narrow front porch, she tried to look like she knew where she was going.

Eleanor rapped on the glass of an improbable French door when she saw a large shape moving behind the wavy glass. Why was the French door improbable? Inside the city line, stories spread and multiplied about break-ins and robberies on doorsteps. The news urged locking up and fortifying against invasion.

This unguarded house in the middle of a rough-cut gem of a city neighborhood looked liable for pilfering. Perhaps, unless the pilferers knew the occupant? The man she sought was daunting, simply due to his physical size, and then a person looked into his face. Immediately, one stepped back out of reach.

Eleanor cocked an eyebrow at that thought—this man she was tied to by blood was in a word—formidable. The door creaked open, and she gazed up at him. Simply in terms of size, he caught the eye and caused a ripple effect of avoidance even as he stood in his own doorway. His eyes scanned her—noticed her rumpled jacket and wild hair, maybe a smudge on her face, and then took in the street, the sidewalk, and raked the sky as if he hadn’t been aware it was day.

He squinted and asked, “Bird? What the devil?” as he opened the door wider with effort that scraped the door jamb as he pulled. “Come around the back next time.”

Eleanor nodded, slipped into the house, and stood in an old foyer jammed with stacked paintings, a few mops, a cracked bucket, and other castoff debris.

He continued in a lowered, gruff voice, “Everyone is asleep.” He gestured to the back of the house. She followed him through a series of ordinary rooms—a cluttered dining room and darkened kitchen where she was reminded that it was not at all early by the glowing eyes of a cat clock blinking eight a.m.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered as they entered a room so bright they both shaded their eyes. He immediately lowered a series of blinds and turned as she settled onto an old, lumpy divan out of exhaustion.

Eleanor sat in silence for a moment. She looked around, searching for the beginning thread of the questions that brought her to this stranger’s home, this strange giant whom they said was her father. Her throat was clogged with all she wanted to know but did not want to blurt out. A sure knot of tension tightened as the struggle to arrive on this back porch on an early Sunday morning ran through her racing brain.

The big man sighed and sat down with the space for a child between them. He allowed the silence to drift down like the dust motes in the beams of light filtering through the slates. His fingered twitched, and Eleanor assumed he must want to get up and leave her there. She blurted out, “I have questions.”

He nodded. “You would.”

She scowled at him. “Of course, I would.” Her gaze picked at the details of his rumpled person—the unshaven face, grey spirals of overlong hair, an old tee shirt under an ancient robe. He had been asleep. Her face softened.

“Why did I come here?” she said to herself. She started to stand and glanced out into a lush but small pocket of a garden. In the back corner, a fig tree twisted between the chain links in a rusted fence and cascaded into deep green shadows. She remembered standing inside the shelter of the wide leaves and knotted branches to kiss the fruit hanging like babies. She had a name for each one.

Eleanor looked down at the giant, still sitting and watching her. “I lived here.”

“Yes. The first four years of your life.”

“I was happy here.”

He nodded. “You and I were happy here.”

“My mother wasn’t?”

He sighed again. Not derisive like before. Maybe sad? “Bird?” He rubbed his whiskery face which sounded like brushes. He said, “Happiness comes and goes. Sometimes it stays for a season. Sometimes a moment.” He looked out at the garden, remembering perhaps some moment.

With him sitting, they were eye to eye. She noticed the green striations in his brown eyes that echoed in her darker eyes. “I feel drawn to the past, but I can’t fix it,” she said.

He nodded. “I have lived my whole life trying to remedy the past. It is a futile pastime, my daughter.” He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. His clasp was warm.

Eleanor nodded. She looked out at the fig tree again. “I am picking at the knots. I know it won’t help, but I can’t let them be.”

He squeezed her hand. “Best to let them be, Bird. Sometimes those ties should be bound. Sometimes it’s a Pandora’s box once you touch it.”

She squeezed his hand back. “That’s what occurred to me last night—right in the middle of the protest.”

“You were there?” he said too loud.

She nodded. “The city’s Pandora’s box is all dumped out and roiling about. They burned things last night—buildings and cars—people were hurt.” Upstairs in the house, a baby began to cry. Eleanor turned her head toward the sound.

The big man grimaced. “I’m sorry you were there.” His voice was rough but not entirely disapproving.

She said, “I needed to be there. But that’s not why I came. I’m so mixed-up. I just need to feel anchored. I need . . .”

He interrupted, “Family. Yes.”

The sounds of steps inside the house joined the murmur of a woman. Eleanor crooked an eye at her father—the giant she barely knew. She was poised to pull away and escape back to the street, the protest, and her friends.

He grinned at her suddenly as a scuttling in the kitchen became obvious. “Stay for breakfast, Bird. You will have your family, after all.”

She blinked as a young woman with corkscrew, blond hair poked her head into the room and murmured hello. She had a tear-stained toddler on her hip.

Eleanor’s father, this large, unfathomable man, stood and pulled her along with him. He said, “Eleanor Bird, this is my wife and,” he smiled, “your little sister.”