He Gave Her My Home, So I Took Back My Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man at the End of the Drive

Nora asks the carriage house tenant what the house looked like in March and he hands her an envelope her grandmother left for the tenth time.

Every time I blinked on the walk down the drive, I saw two hands laced together under a tablecloth.

Graham's hand. Delphine's hand.

I had no place to put it yet, so I carried it, and I did not cry.

The carriage house sat at the end of the drive under two old maples.

I had never been inside it.

The lease was Gran's, signed years before she died, and the rent came every month in a plain envelope with a money order.

I had never needed to knock.

I walked down in the same blazer I had slept in, with Gran's quilt still creased into my sleeve.

The big doors on the garage side were open.

Inside, a wooden boat sat upside down on sawhorses, half of it sanded pale and half still wearing old green paint.

The air smelled like cedar shavings and varnish.

A man stood at the near end of the hull with a plane in one hand, taking off a curl of wood as long as my arm.

He didn't stop until the curl came free.

Then he put the plane down and looked at me.

He was tall, maybe mid-thirties, with dark hair going gray at the sides and a pale scar through his left eyebrow.

His right hand was wrapped in gauze from the knuckles to the wrist.

"You're Nora," he said.

"I'm sorry to walk in. I should have called. I don't have a number for you."

"Cal," he said. "Just Cal. You don't need a number. You can walk in."

His voice was low and unhurried, and it did something to the cold knot under my ribs that I decided not to look at.

"Did you hurt your hand on the boat?"

"On a chisel. It's fine." He pulled a stool out with his foot. "You slept in the kitchen."

I stared at him.

"The light was on all night," he said. "I can see the east windows from the cot."

"The party," I said. "You heard it."

"I heard the whole lawn clap."

He said it without any judgment.

That was why I sat down.

"I need to ask you something strange," I said. "You've lived here since before my grandmother died. In March, did you see anyone come to the house? Someone with papers?"

Cal thought about it for a moment, rubbing the gauze with his thumb.

"A Thursday," he said. "Early afternoon. Delphine came up the drive in a blue sedan. She carried a folder in. You were at the kitchen table with a stack of papers, because I could see you through the window."

"Was anyone with her?"

"No one."

"No man in a gray suit? No one with a notary's stamp?"

"No one but her. She was in there about twenty minutes. She left alone, and she was holding the folder against her chest."

I closed my eyes.

I remembered the afternoon so clearly.

Forty science quizzes, a red pen, a sandwich, and Delphine coming in with her hair damp from the rain.

I just need your signature on the roof thing, Nor. Graham's swamped. It's three places.

I had signed at three places without turning the pages back.

"I didn't read it," I said.

"Most people don't read what a person they live with hands them."

"Gran would have read it."

Something moved across his face and was gone.

"Your grandmother read everything," he said. "Twice."

He crossed to a battered metal desk against the wall and opened the second drawer.

He took out a long cream envelope, soft at the corners from handling.

My name was on the front in Gran's tall, slanting hand.

For N., it said. When someone puts her out of her own house.

I couldn't take it.

"She left you this?"

"She gave it to me the week before she died." He held it out. "She said to hold it until the day somebody put you out of Kittredge House. Then she said to hand it over and say nothing else."

"Nobody has put me out," I said.

"Nine nights at the Harbor Inn," Cal said. "I counted from my window. I watched your car go down the drive every time, and I watched the blue sedan unload her suitcases the next morning."

He did not say it kindly or unkindly.

He just said it.

"Last night you didn't go," he said.

I took the envelope.

The paper was heavy, and the flap had never been sealed.

I looked at him, and he looked at the boat, giving me the room.

Inside there was a small brass key with a loop of faded red thread through the bow.

And a folded sheet in Gran's hand.

Nora, it said. If you are reading this, I was right to worry and you were right to stay.

Go to my sewing room. The cedar chest. Then trust the man at the end of the drive.

He is not who the town says he is.

Ask him himself.

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