Next Time Away novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Dead Bolt

Tove calls her grandmother's old caretaker, Jonas, who changes the locks and rebuilds the crib; at one in the morning Soren and Dagny stand on the porch, Tove lets only Elsie in, and Elsie whispers that her mother says Tove is going away to rest.

I sat on the bottom stair with my coat still on and listened to Dagny's van back off my grandmother's roses.

Soren had a key.

Dagny had a key.

His mother had a key, and she had never once knocked.

I could not stay in a house with that many keys.

The locksmith in town said he could come Thursday.

It was Tuesday.

On my grandmother's fridge, under a magnet shaped like a loon, hung her list of numbers in her slanting handwriting.

Doctor. Plumber. Church.

At the bottom: Jonas. Roof, drive, anything.

After Soren's brother's funeral, Soren had asked me to keep Jonas off our land.

He had asked it softly, with his hand on my back, and I had said yes.

I had said yes to a lot of things that winter.

I dialed before I could say yes to anything else.

He answered on the second ring.

"Tove?" he said. His voice was low and rough. "Is it the baby?"

"The baby's fine," I said. "I need my locks changed. Tonight."

He did not ask me why.

"I'll bring a deadbolt," he said. "Twenty minutes. Don't open the door for anybody but me."

It was eighteen minutes.

His truck was old and dark green, and he parked it on the road instead of my drive, so it would not block anyone in.

I opened the door, and he stood on the porch with a toolbox and snow on his shoulders.

He was bigger than I remembered.

He took off his boots on the mat without being asked.

Then he looked at the living room, at the three stockings, at the green ribbon someone had left on the rug.

He did not say anything about any of it.

"Front, back and the garage side door," I said.

"Front and back first."

He worked on his knees at the front door with the old lock in pieces on the mat beside him.

I stood in the hall holding the new keys because he had told me to.

"Who has copies of the old ones?" he asked.

"My husband. His sister-in-law. His mother."

"Now nobody," he said, and turned the new bolt. It slid home with a heavy click.

I had to look at the wall for a moment.

When I could, I said, "There's one more thing. Upstairs."

He followed me up and stopped in the nursery doorway.

He read the sign on the door, then the twin bed, then the empty corner by the window.

His jaw tightened.

"Where's the crib?" he said.

"I don't know."

"Where would they put it?"

I thought of the three stockings and of how thorough they had been.

"The garage."

It was behind the snow shovels, wrapped in a blue tarp, with the mattress still in its plastic.

Someone had stacked a box of Elsie's winter boots on top of it.

Jonas lifted the boots off one at a time and set them neatly on the floor.

He carried the crib in pieces up the stairs without asking me to move out of his way, and I had never been so grateful to be ignored.

I sat on the edge of the twin bed and held the screwdriver.

He tightened every bolt twice.

"Hold that rail," he said, and I held it.

Our hands did not touch.

It took him half an hour to put my baby's bed back together under her own window.

When he stood up, the top of his head nearly reached the ceiling light.

"Get the twin bed out of here in the morning," he said. "Not tonight. You shouldn't lift."

"I'll pay you," I said. "For tonight. And the bolts."

"Your grandmother paid me through the end of the decade," he said. "I'm not nearly done."

I laughed.

It came out as a hiccup and then as something worse.

He did not touch me.

He put the screwdriver down on the dresser, and he stayed in the doorway, between me and the stairs, until I had finished.

"You should eat," he said. "There's soup in my truck. It's the good kind. I didn't make it."

I ate it standing at the counter while he checked every window.

At ten he put his boots back on.

"If anyone comes," he said, "you don't have to open the door. You can call me and tell me to come back."

"Why did you come?" I asked. "Soren told me never to call you."

He stood on the porch with the cold coming in around him.

"Your grandmother asked me to look after this house," he said. "She didn't say only while it was easy."

He left, and I locked the new bolt.

At one in the morning my phone buzzed on the nightstand.

The doorbell camera.

Soren and Dagny stood on my porch in the blue light, and between them stood Elsie in her purple coat.

It was six degrees outside.

The camera caught the white of her breath.

I went down the stairs with a hand on my belly and the other on the rail.

"Tove, please," Dagny said through the door, her voice small and shaking. "The motels are full for the holiday. Elsie's freezing."

"Tove, open up," Soren said. "We can talk like adults."

I put the chain on and opened the door a hand's width.

"Elsie comes in and gets warm," I said. "You two wait out there."

Dagny nodded fast, with tears in her eyes, and thanked me.

I slid Elsie through the gap and closed the door.

She stood on the mat, shivering, and looked up at me.

"Mommy says," she whispered, "after the baby comes, you're going away to rest."

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