Chapter 20: Six Weeks

Hamish's POV

She texted me at ten that night, one line.

Can you get a truck to the lake house by morning?

I called the foreman at 10:04.

He answered on the first ring, and all he said was, "How many men?"

By half past five the next morning, nine of them stood in the Harmons' driveway with two box trucks and a flatbed.

They passed a thermos of coffee around in the dark.

Russell opened the front door in yesterday's clothes.

He had not slept either.

"I still have a key," he said. "It's technically not my house anymore. I thought someone should be here who'd let you in."

"Thanks," I said, and I meant it, and I did not shake his hand.

We went in through the kitchen.

The nursery was upstairs, second door on the left, painted soft gray.

Over the changing table was a half-finished moon, and the brush still lay in the tray, stiff with dried paint.

I stood in the doorway a second.

The rocking chair was in the corner, where Kelsey had sat in a white robe.

"Take the chair last," the foreman said quietly. "Put a blanket on it."

"Why last?"

"Because that's the one she'll want to burn," he said. "And she'll want to decide."

We worked fast.

The men carried the dresser, the changing table, the books and her winter coats.

They filled forty boxes with a life she had walked out of in her socks.

At six fifty-two I carried down the last one, a shoebox of her daughter's drawings from the hall closet, and put it in the truck myself.

At seven o'clock a white van pulled into the drive, and two men in matching jackets got out and looked at the empty house.