His Favorite Shirt novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Staff Cottage

Nolan gives Thora the cottage, Posy turns up at dawn, Brielle and Nolan say each other's names stiffly, and Heath texts her to come to brunch.

I took the ring out of his hand because it was mine.

It was cold, and it had lake sand in the setting.

"Nolan Standring," he said. "The boats and the grounds are mine. The desk is my mother's."

"Thora."

"I know."

He stepped back so I could come in.

The cottage was one room with a bed, a table, a small stove and a window that faced the water.

His things were already gone from it. A folded blanket sat at the foot of the bed.

"I sleep in the boathouse loft," he said. "Nobody's using it. Lock the door if it makes you feel better."

"You saw what happened on the dock."

"From the boathouse. All of it."

He did not say anything else.

In the lamplight his eyes were green, with one brown fleck in the left one.

"Thank you for the ring," I said.

"Don't thank me yet. The kettle's broken."

He left, and the door clicked shut behind him.

I hung the dress on the back of the door and sat on the bed with the ring in my fist.

Then I did what I should have done in the restroom.

I emailed the recording to Bea and to myself and uploaded a third copy to my cloud drive.

I played the first ten seconds to be sure it had caught the women's voices.

It had.

I slept in my clothes.

Someone knocked at the door at ten past six, small and fast.

I opened it, and Posy was standing there in her pajamas and rabbit slippers, with her hair in a tangle.

"Are you still my Thora?" she asked.

I knelt down on the cold step. "Where's your mom?"

"Asleep. I got out." She looked proud of it. "Daddy was all wet last night. Mommy said you were being dramatic."

"Did she?"

"I don't think you're dramatic. I think you were mad."

I did not know what to say to a six-year-old who had just described me better than her father had.

"I was mad," I said.

"Okay." She pushed past me into the cottage and climbed up onto the bed. "Do you have any toast?"

"No. There's a broken kettle."

"That's okay."

Footsteps came down the path, and Nolan stopped in the open door with a mug in each hand.

"She was at the boat dock," he said. "Trying to untie a canoe."

"I wasn't going to go far," said Posy.

He crouched down in front of her so their eyes were level. "You never go near the water alone. Not once. Say it."

"Not once," Posy said.

He held her gaze a little longer than he held most things.

Then he stood up and gave me one of the mugs.

"The kettle works on the main stove. I lied."

"Why did you lie?"

"I wanted to see if you'd ask for help."

I laughed, once, before I could stop it.

Posy ate half of a granola bar he found in his pocket, and for four minutes the cottage was almost normal.

Then Brielle came running down the path in a cream robe with her hair loose.

"Posy! Oh, thank God."

She swept her up. She looked over Posy's head, saw Nolan, and went still.

"Nolan," she said.

"Brielle."

Neither of them said anything else.

It lasted until Brielle's smile came back, a little too bright. "Thank you for finding her. I woke up and she was gone."

"She was trying to untie a canoe," Nolan said.

Brielle turned to me, and her face was soft and sorry.

"Thora, I owe you an apology. Heath got carried away yesterday, and I let it go on. Come to brunch at eleven. We'll all sit down like adults."

She kissed Posy's hair and carried her out.

I watched them go up the path.

"You two know each other," I said.

"It's a small lake." Nolan took my empty mug. "I have to open the docks."

He left before I could ask anything else.

I stood at the window with my phone.

It buzzed at 7:40.

Heath: Brunch at 11 on the terrace. Wear something nice. We'll end this properly.

I read the last line twice.

Then I took the blue dress out of my bag and hung it where I could see it.

I was going to brunch.

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