A Love Lost to the Years novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Stoop

Annabel waits on Sonya's steps at dawn and admits Sheldon was her fiancé but will not say why he came. Then a photo arrives from a stranger who knows which door Kenneth is behind.

Sonya came off her night shift at seven and found her brother sitting on her couch with his boots on.

He hadn't turned a light on, and the coffee maker hadn't been touched.

"You look like a man who slept in a sawmill," she said, dropping her bag by the door.

"I slept in a lounge," Kenneth said. "Briefly."

"Whose lounge?"

"Annabel's."

Sonya looked at him for a while.

Then she took off her puffer jacket, hung it on the hook, and went to start the coffee herself.

"Okay," she said. "Tell it in order. Don't skip the part where you're an idiot, I want that part."

He told it in order.

He told her about the shelves, the robe, the door and the kneeling man.

When he got to the hand on the shoulder, Sonya stopped with the scoop in the air.

"She didn't push him off."

"No."

"What did she say?"

"She said it was a work thing."

"A work thing." Sonya shook the grounds into the filter, hard. "Ken, I love you, but if a man ever cried on my knee in a closed office at eleven at night, I would remember the exact words I used to get him off it."

"She said she'd explain."

"Did she?"

"I left before she could."

"Good for you." Sonya hit the button. "Wait. Was that good for you? I can't tell. You've got the face you get when you've cut a board a quarter inch short."

Before he could answer, her phone buzzed on the counter, and she turned it over to look.

"It's the lobby camera," she said. "Somebody's sitting on our front steps."

She held the screen up.

A woman in a black suit sat on the second step with her coat across her knees and her back very straight.

Kenneth knew the shape of her shoulders in any light.

"I'll make more coffee," Sonya said. "Take your time. I'll be watching through the peephole, and I won't pretend otherwise."

The morning outside was gray and cold, and the wind off the lake smelled of ice.

Annabel stood when she heard the door.

She was still in last night's suit, and her hair had been pushed back with her hand, not a comb.

In seven years he had never seen her without the hair done.

"I didn't call," she said. "I thought you wouldn't pick up."

"I wouldn't have."

"I know."

She did not come closer.

She held her coat in both hands.

"Sheldon Lowry was my fiancé," she said. "Nine years ago. It ended badly, and I should have cut him out of my life completely, and I didn't. He's been at the edge of it ever since. Last night is the closest he's ever gotten."

"Closest to what?"

"To me."

"Your hand was on his shoulder."

"Yes."

"Why?"

She looked at the lake, not at him.

"I won't lie to you," she said. "I won't tell you that either. Not yet."

He laughed, and it came out short.

"That's your explanation."

"It's the only honest one I have right now. I'm asking you to come home, Ken. We'll sit in the kitchen. I'll answer everything I can."

"Everything you can."

"Yes."

"Is there a part you can't?"

Her mouth tightened.

She was good at not answering, and he had admired it in boardrooms.

He had never been on the other side of it before.

"Yes," she said.

The wind pulled at her coat and she didn't seem to feel it.

Kenneth thought about the chair, and the four months, and every late night he had waited up for her at home without once asking where she had been.

"I'm not coming home today," he said. "My tools are in the shed behind the house. I'll come Saturday and take them to the workshop."

"They're yours. Take what you want."

"I will."

"Kenneth." She said his whole name, which she only did in court or in bed. "He told you something last night, in the hall. I heard it through the door."

"He told me you never said why you picked me."

"I'll tell you."

"When?"

She opened her mouth.

Nothing came out for a long moment.

"Soon," she said at last.

"Seven years is soon?"

"Please let me do it right."

Her voice had cracked on the last word.

It was the first crack he had heard in it, ever, and he hated how much he wanted to step forward and mend it.

He turned and went back inside.

Through the glass, he watched her stand on the steps a moment longer.

Then she put on her coat, and she walked to a car he hadn't noticed, and it pulled away.

His phone buzzed in his back pocket.

It was a number he didn't know.

The message was a photo with no words at first.

A younger Annabel, about twenty-seven, laughing in a white coat on a dock, with a diamond on her left hand that wasn't the ring he'd bought her.

A man's arm was around her waist, and the sleeve was camel.

The words came a second later.

"She was mine first. Sleep well at your sister's, Mr. Nordlund."

Kenneth turned around slowly and looked at the street.

Nobody was parked there, and nobody was walking.

Whoever had sent it knew exactly which door he was standing behind.

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