I Stripped to Keep My Boyfriend in School, and He Sold Me to the Man My Brother Died Owing novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Plane

He was standing at the workbench with a plane in his hand.

It was my father's, with the rosewood knob and the notch gouged out of the sole.

He held it lightly against a long curl of cedar.

He was thinner than I remembered, and bearded, with his dark-blond hair grown down over his collar.

His wool shirt was dusted with sawdust, and there was a pencil behind his ear.

A kerosene lamp burned on the bench, and a small iron stove ticked in the corner.

On the wall above it hung a calendar from a Superior hardware store with the days crossed off in red.

I could not move.

I stood in the doorway with the crowbar hanging from my hand and the moon at my back.

The cold came into the shed around me, and nothing in my body knew how to do anything.

"Iris," my brother said.

His voice had not changed.

It was the same voice that had told me to stop looking at my feet, and the same voice that had called me kid.

The crowbar fell out of my hand and hit the planks.

"No," I said.

"Iris."

"No. No. You're dead."

"I'm not," Matti said.

"I went to your funeral."

"I know you did."

He set the plane down on the bench very slowly, with both hands.

"I was in the loft of the church," he said. "I watched you walk in. I watched you hold Ma up."

I made a noise I had never made.

It came from the bottom of my stomach.

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