He Thought I Had Nowhere to Go Until I Disappeared novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Forty-One Letters

Her grandmother shows her the notebook where she logged forty-one letters, and Keeley realizes her husband has been taking the mail for six years. Nolan sets his terms, and the landline rings with her husband on it.

Grandma Ardis lowered herself into the chair at the head of the table and told Nolan to sit.

He sat across from me and did not take his eyes off my face.

"Forty-one," Grandma said. "I wrote them in this kitchen, one a month at first and then at birthdays and Christmas."

She tapped a green notebook on the table.

"I wrote down the date of every one, so I'd know if you answered."

She turned it around and slid it toward me.

Her handwriting went down the page in neat blue lines, with a date on each.

The first was dated three weeks after my mother's funeral.

The last was dated two weeks before her surgery.

"Nolan took them to the post office himself," Grandma said. "He never trusted my mailbox."

"I never got one," I said.

"Not a single one?"

"Not one. Not a card."

Grandma's hand went flat on the table.

"Then who got them?"

I opened my mouth to say I didn't know.

Then I thought about the pile of mail on my kitchen counter, sorted into two neat stacks before I ever got home.

"Corbin gets the mail," I said slowly. "Every day. He's always done it. He says it saves me the trouble."

Nobody said anything.

Nolan put his elbows on the table and rubbed his face with both hands.

"Six years," he said, mostly to himself.

"What did he tell you?" I asked Grandma. "When I stopped calling."

"You didn't stop," she said. "Corbin phoned me a month after the funeral. He said you were not well, and that you had asked the family to stop calling and write instead, so you could take your time."

"I never asked that."

"He said you were ashamed. I told him there was nothing to be ashamed of."

"Ashamed of what?"

Grandma looked at me, and her mouth went thin.

"Of the money," she said. "He said you'd taken some from my account, that you were very sorry and couldn't face me."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"I never took a dollar from you. Corbin told me Alana said I stole from you. He told me she said it in front of the whole family, at the reception."

"Alana never said any such thing."

"He said she did."

"I was at that reception, Keeley. Nobody said a word about money, and I would have remembered. I raised that girl's father."

Her cane rapped the floor once.

"Where were you when this was supposedly said?"

"In the bathroom," I said. "I was throwing up."

Nobody said anything again.

Then my grandmother got up, took her cane in both hands and put her other hand on the back of my head.

"Eat something," she said. "You're all bones."

"I had stew."

"Then have more. And tomorrow we will sort out which of us has been lied to."

She stood in the doorway a moment longer.

"Nolan, put her in the blue room."

"Yes, ma'am."

When her cane had gone all the way up the stairs, he stood and took the notebook off the table and put it in the cupboard with the flour.

"Here is how it's going to go," he said.

"I didn't ask."

"You came to her door with twenty-three dollars. You'll want this."

I waited.

"You stay the winter," he said. "You earn your keep. I don't care what with. You drive her to her checkups once I teach you the road, and you do not take a dime from her."

"I wouldn't."

"You'd be the first Engberg who didn't."

I let that sit between us.

"And there's one more rule," he said. "Her table is one place in the world he doesn't come into. Nobody says his name over her food."

"That's fine with me."

"Good."

"I'm not here for you," I said.

"I know." He picked up the flashlight from the counter. "You're here because there was nowhere else to be."

That landed, and I didn't answer it.

He walked me up to a narrow room under the roof with a quilt I remembered.

He stopped in the doorway with his back to me.

"The porch light stays on all night," he said. "I'm next door. If you need anything, you walk across the yard."

"I won't need anything."

"Good."

He shut the door behind him.

I sat on the bed with my coat still on.

The telephone downstairs began to ring.

It was the old landline in the kitchen, the one with the cord, and it rang half a dozen times before Nolan picked it up.

I stood at the top of the stairs and heard him say, "Hatch."

Then he said nothing for a long time.

When I came down, he held the receiver out to me.

"It's your husband," he said. "He says to put his wife on."

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