My Stepbrother Came Home for the Anniversary, and I Didn't Know Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Dock

Rebuilding their father's river dock, Matti pulls a splinter from her palm with his teeth, she sets her three rules, and at nine she is at the sauna door with the key.

Arvid was waiting on the bank at eight with a thermos, three hammers and a bag of cardamom bread from the Finnish bakery.

He hugged Matti first, which I had expected, and he held on to him for a long time, which I hadn't.

My stepfather was a big, slow man, and he held his son with both arms and his bad shoulder shaking.

"Look at you," he said into Matti's jacket. "You got taller."

"I'm twenty-three, Dad. It's done."

"You'd be surprised."

Arvid let go and wiped his glasses on his shirt, and then he saw Matti's mouth.

"What happened to your lip?"

"Walked into a door," Matti said.

"What door?"

"It was a hard one."

Arvid nodded slowly and looked at me.

I was holding a plank, and I kept my face very still.

"You're limping, Kaisa," he said.

"I'm not limping."

I was, a little, and I knew exactly why.

Behind him Matti looked at the river, and the corner of his mouth moved.

The dock stuck out into the Lester River about twenty feet, and half the boards had gone soft and gray.

Arvid had been saving up to fix it for six years, and then his heart had made other plans.

He poured coffee into the thermos lid and handed it to me first.

It was strong and sweet, and the bread was still a little warm, and for one minute I felt eleven years old.

"You two were always a team," Arvid said.

He said it to the river, and he said it softly.

"Pry up the bad ones, put down the new ones, and I'll supervise from the lawn chair. Doctor says no hammers."

"Doctor says a lot of things," I said.

"That's what I told him."

He lowered himself into the lawn chair with a small grunt and picked up the bread.

Matti and I knelt on opposite sides of the first rotten board.

We worked for an hour without saying a word.

I pulled nails with the claw of my hammer, and he lifted the boards out and stacked them on the bank.

His forearms flexed when he lifted, and the burn scar pulled tight along the left one.

I caught myself watching it twice.

Both times I turned back to my nails and drove the claw in harder than I needed to.

I told myself the glances were because I didn't know where it came from.

That was true, and it wasn't the reason.

The new board I lifted was untreated, and it had a long, dry edge.

I slid my hand along it to line it up, and a splinter went into the heel of my palm.

"Shit," I said.

"Let me see," Matti said.

"It's nothing."

"Kay."

He had already crossed the boards on his knees.

Arvid was on his feet and walking up to the truck for the drill, and the lawn chair stood empty behind us.

Matti took my wrist, and then my hand, and turned it palm up.

The splinter was dark and half an inch long, and it was lodged deep.

His thumb pressed on the skin around it, and I felt that touch in the back of my knees.

"You still get them in the same place," he said.

"What place?"

"The heel of the left hand. You used to hold the board wrong."

I used to let him pull them out with tweezers on this same dock.

He was eight, and he stuck out his tongue when he concentrated.

"I don't have tweezers," I said.

"I know."

He bent his head and put his mouth over the heel of my hand.

His teeth closed carefully around the end of the splinter, and he drew it out slowly.

I felt the scrape, and the pull, and the warm wet drag of his lip across my palm.

He turned his head and spat it into the river.

Then he didn't let go.

His mouth stayed against the heel of my hand a moment longer than it needed to.

My pulse was going in the spot he was touching, and he had to feel it.

The hammer slipped from his other hand and hit the dock with a flat bang.

He didn't pick it up.

That was temper, I told myself. He hated me, and he was being careful.

I didn't pull my hand away, and neither did he.

I thought: I don't know a single scar on you anymore, and I want every one of them.

I didn't say that.

"You done?" I said instead.

"Not yet." He turned my hand over and pressed his thumb into the red mark. "That'll sting."

"It does."

"Good."

The truck door slammed up on the bank, and I took my hand back.

Matti picked up the hammer.

We finished the first three boards before noon, and Arvid told us to get the extra deck screws from the boathouse.

We went in without speaking, and I shut the door behind us.

It smelled like old canvas and cedar, and the kayaks hung from racks along the wall.

I stood with my back against the canoe and my arms crossed.

"I have rules," I said.

"Okay."

"One. We never talk about the money."

His face went flat.

"Fine," he said.

"Two. No kissing."

"I haven't," Matti said.

"I know you haven't. Keep it that way."

"Fine," he said again.

"Three. The Monday after the party you leave, and you don't call me."

He looked at me for a long moment.

I saw a muscle jump in his jaw.

"Yes to the first," he said. "Yes to the second."

"And the third."

"Monday," Matti said.

It sounded like a word he had to push out through something heavy.

"Good," I said. I took the box of screws from the shelf and turned.

At supper Arvid told the whole story of the dock again, and Diane laughed in the right places and didn't look at either of us.

When I stood to go, Arvid caught my sleeve.

He held out a brass key on a loop of leather.

"The sauna," he said. "Heat it tonight for the boy. Fargo thinned his blood."

"Dad, I'm fine," Matti said from across the table.

"He's not fine. He's shaking."

I looked at Matti's hands, and they were flat and still on the tablecloth.

"I'm not heating a sauna for him," I said.

"For me, then," Arvid said, smiling. "I like it hot when the boy's home."

I took the key because I couldn't think of a way not to.

I told myself I'd leave it on the kitchen hook.

At nine o'clock that night I was standing at the sauna door by the river with the key in my fist and the stove already lit.

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