Chapter 24: Next December

The island ferry left at six, in the blue dark, with the engine grumbling under our feet.

Stian stood beside me at the rail with two paper cups.

Neither of us had said a word since the dock.

Halfway across, the sun came up behind the hill above Bayfield, and the whole town lit up gold.

"There," he said, and pointed with his cup.

On the hill stood a gray house with a wide porch and a crooked chimney, a FOR SALE sign half buried in the snow.

"The old woman who owned it died in the fall," he said. "Her daughters want it sold."

"It's beautiful."

"It needs a roof. It needs a furnace. It needs somebody who can read a ledger."

"Stian."

"I'm not buying it," he said. "I thought you should see it. It's yours to look at, and yours to pass on."

I looked at the house for a long time.

"My name only," I said.

"Your name only."

"Even if you're in it every night."

"I'll bring my own toothbrush," he said.

I laughed so loudly the deckhand turned around.

The next December, I stood in my own living room on my own floor, and the roof did not leak.

Snow fell outside the tall front window.

The furnace ran with a low steady hum, and I had paid for it, and nobody had asked me to.

Twelve chairs stood around the long oak table in the next room.

Each one was different, from a church sale, a farm auction or Ellie's attic.

I had bought them one at a time, over a year, for guests I did not know yet.

I knew them now.

Stian's mother was putting out forks, in the red scarf, telling a story about a goose.

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