Chapter 7: The Lock

Kristin said she was clumsy.

She said the baby made her dizzy, and a woman near the front handed her a napkin.

Birgit swept up the glass herself, talking the whole time about how a broken glass at a shower meant good luck.

Nils sat with his tie loose and watched his brother.

Anders stood at the gift table with his hands in his jacket pockets and said nothing.

When the cake came out, I stood up.

Pia was already standing.

"Let's go," she said. "I'm not eating a cake with that woman's name on it."

Anders was waiting beside the door.

"Is the lock still new?" he asked me.

"Since Monday."

"Then let me see it."

Pia drove her truck. Anders followed in his own, a green pickup with a ladder rack and Ontario plates.

By the time we reached Larsmont Road the sun was behind the trees and the lake was dark.

I stood on my grandmother's porch with the blue door in front of me.

The brass lock still shone.

Anders took a toolbox from the back of his truck and set it on the top step.

"I need you to say it," he said. "You can change a lock on your own house. You don't have to ask me."

"The deed's in the recipe tin," I said. "She kept a copy there, folded in the lid. I took the tin on Monday."

"Then it's yours."

"It's mine."

Pia was already in the cab of her truck with a flashlight, ready to hold it up for him.

"Do it," I said.

It took him twenty minutes.

He unscrewed the new cylinder with a hand drill, laid the pieces on a cloth, and set a different lock into the door.

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