My Mother Married Into Four Brothers, and Each One Says I Saved Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Dinner for Two Nurses

Soren charms her friend from work right out of the farmhouse and Kasper reads her texts aloud, so Signe makes a date out loud and then kisses Ansel in the barn.

My charge nurse came to supper on Saturday, and Soren ran her off in forty minutes.

I had asked her myself, in the break room, the night before the wedding.

She was fifty and funny.

She had taught me everything I knew about sitting up with the dying, and she was the only friend I had who was not in a hospital bed.

She brought a pie and a bottle of wine.

Soren met her at the door and took both out of her hands.

"You must be the famous charge nurse," he said. "Signe talks about you all the time."

I had never said a word.

He gave her the seat on his right, and he poured her wine.

He told her the story of the harvest flood, in the plural, with his hand on his chest.

"When we went in, we thought we'd lost him," Soren said. "And then, out of nowhere, a girl in a red coat."

My charge nurse put her fork down, charmed.

I watched him work.

He asked her about her husband, and her bad knee, and the hospice, and he knew something about each one.

By the time dessert came, she was laughing so hard she had to wipe her eyes.

Then Soren leaned toward her, kindly, and lowered his voice.

"I hate to say this. The dike road is a nightmare after dark. Deer, the low spot, no lights."

"Oh, I'll manage," she said.

"I'd never forgive myself. Let me run you home."

She looked at me.

I opened my mouth, and Kasper shoved back his chair.

"Soren," he said.

"I'm only being a gentleman."

My charge nurse got her coat.

She gave me a bright, confused look at the door.

Something had gone wrong, and she did not know what.

Soren held the truck door for her, and they drove away together into the dark.

He came back an hour later, alone, whistling.

I was waiting in the kitchen.

"What did you say to her?" I asked.

"That you work too hard." He hung his keys on the hook. "That you need fewer people leaning on you."

"She is not leaning on me."

"Sweetheart, you've got a marsh coming." He smiled at me, all friendly. "You don't have time for friends who'll want a piece."

"Get out of my kitchen."

"It's not your kitchen yet," Soren said, and went up the stairs.

My phone buzzed on the table before I could answer him.

Kasper reached it first.

He read the screen aloud in his flat, even voice.

"Unknown number. 'It's the respiratory therapist from your unit. Dinner Tuesday? The Pine Room, seven.'"

"Give me that."

"For safety," Kasper said, and did not give it to me. "I don't know him."

"You don't know me, either."

He thought about that.

Then he held out the phone, and I took it.

My hands were shaking, and I was not sure whether I was angry or only tired.

Eero, at the sink, did not look up.

"I'll text him back right now," I said, loud enough for the whole house. "Yes. Tuesday. Seven o'clock at the Pine Room."

I typed it with my thumbs, hard.

Kasper's jaw worked, and he closed his mouth.

I went out the back door into the cold.

I did not decide to go to the barn.

I went because the light was on, and because the one brother who had said nothing at supper was the only one I could stand.

Ansel was stacking empty crates under a work light.

He had his sleeves buttoned and his dark hair pushed back, and he turned when the door banged.

I noticed that he had come to the barn from the north side, the long way, instead of down the path along the reservoir.

I had noticed everything about him since the porch.

"Soren drove my friend home," I said.

"I saw."

"Why does nobody stop him?"

"It doesn't work." He set a crate on the pile. "He did it to my teachers. Every girl I brought home."

"And you let him?"

"I was ten," Ansel said. "Then I was fifteen. Then it was a habit."

It was the longest speech I had heard him make.

I crossed the barn.

I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it anyway, which is not like me.

I took two fingers of his canvas collar in my hand and pulled his head down.

I kissed him.

His mouth was warm and surprised, and for a moment it did not move.

Then it did, slow and careful.

I felt him breathe in through his nose.

His hands stayed at his sides, clenched, the knuckles white.

I tasted coffee and cold air, and I stood on my toes and pushed closer.

He made a low sound in his throat.

Then he caught my wrists, gently, and held them away from him.

His chest was going hard.

"Not here, Signe," Ansel said.

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