The Man My Sister Left Behind novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Guest House

Wynne moves in beside the boathouse, finds Cora's cottage ruined, and bandages Ansel's hand until Cora calls with a warning about the scarf in Wynne's suitcase.

I didn't go to the guest house.

I went to my sister's cottage on Mill Lane, because she was the only person I'd ever known who left a trail.

The door was unlocked.

Cora's kitchen smelled of lemon soap and burnt toast, and for one second I almost called her name.

Everything was in its place.

The bed was made with hospital corners, and her good coat was gone from the hook.

A jar on the counter held three hundred dollars in ones and fives, with a label in her round teacher's hand.

"New roof for room 4."

I stood and looked at that jar for a long time.

My sister had not stolen a necklace.

My sister had once driven forty miles back to a grocery store to return an extra dime.

On the refrigerator hung a calendar from the Kettle Cove Credit Union.

Wednesday was circled in red.

Beside it, in her handwriting:

"B. 9am."

Wednesday had been three days ago.

I took a photo of it with my phone.

Behind me, a floorboard creaked.

"Don't touch anything," Ansel said.

He stood in the doorway with his tie gone and his collar open.

He had not changed out of the morning suit, and he looked like he hadn't sat down since sunrise.

"It's my sister's house."

"It's my fiancee's house. I pay the heating."

"Ex-fiancee, then, and I'm still her next of kin."

"She left you a note."

"She left me you," I said, before I could stop myself.

I saw it hit him.

He walked past me into the room and turned in a slow circle, looking at the rug and the lamp and the shelf of picture books.

"Fourteen months," he said. "I've been in this house a hundred times."

"I know."

"I don't know where she keeps her mother's recipes."

"She doesn't have her mother's recipes. Our mother left when I was seven."

He turned and looked at me.

"I didn't know that."

"Did you ever ask her?"

It was an ugly question, and I knew it as it left my mouth.

He didn't flinch.

"Yes," he said. "She changed the subject. Every time."

He picked up a framed photograph from the shelf.

It was the two of them on the Marigold's bow, last August.

Cora was laughing, with her hair blowing across her face, and Ansel was looking at her.

I felt something cold turn over in my stomach.

"She was happy," I said.

"I thought so."

"She was, Ansel."

"Then why isn't she here?"

He said it quietly, and then his hand closed on the frame.

The glass cracked in his fist.

Red welled up through his fingers and dripped onto the rug.

"Don't move."

I was across the room before I'd decided to be.

"Sit down."

"It's nothing."

"It's glass in your palm, so sit down."

He sat on the arm of the sofa, and I went into the kitchen and ran the tap cold.

Cora kept a first aid kit under the sink, because she taught eight-year-olds.

I opened his hand under the light.

There was a long clean slice across the pad of the palm, and a sliver of glass in it.

I held the tweezers steady, and he watched my hands and not the cut.

"You do this a lot," he said.

"Forty times a shift."

"Does it get easier?"

"The cuts don't."

I drew the sliver out, and he breathed in sharply through his teeth.

I pressed gauze over it and wrapped it, and my fingers brushed the back of his hand.

The crescent scar was inches from my thumb.

I forced myself to look at his palm and not at the scar.

For a moment neither of us moved.

His skin was warm and rough, and I could feel his pulse against my wrist.

He was looking at my face now.

He looked as though he was trying to recall a word he used to know.

"Have we met," he said slowly, "before this week?"

My mouth went dry.

"I've been in Alaska three years."

"That isn't what I asked."

My phone rang.

The sound was so loud in the small room that we both flinched.

I looked at the screen.

It said Cora.

I turned it so he could see, because I couldn't think of anything else to do.

He was off the sofa and at my shoulder.

I put it on speaker.

"Cora?"

There was a long hiss of road noise, and then my sister's voice, small and quick.

"Don't let him show you the scarf, Wynne."

"Cora, where are you? What scarf?"

"Please," she said. "Please, just don't look at it."

The line went dead.

Ansel stared at the phone.

His face had closed.

"What scarf?" I said.

"I don't know," he said, and he was a bad liar.

I did.

I knew exactly which scarf.

It was green wool, with my father's clumsy darning at one end.

I had left it on a boathouse floor three years ago, and Cora had known that for three years.

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