Old Maid For My Room, Young Maid For His Bed, I Kicked All Three Out novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eli's Uncle

Erik, the half-brother Craig shut out, appears at the door because Eli called him, and tells her he already knew.

Craig left for work at eight with a kiss on my forehead and a travel mug.

"Dorothea will bring your lunch up," he said. "Don't lift anything."

"I won't."

Britt took Eli to school in my car at a quarter past nine.

I stood at the upstairs window and watched them back out of the driveway.

Eli waved at me from the back seat.

Britt waved too, with her whole arm.

At nine thirty there was a knock at the front door.

Dorothea was in the kitchen. I got to the door first.

I had not seen that man in four years.

Erik Sorensen stood on my porch in a gray canvas jacket, his hands in his pockets, his dark blond hair cut shorter than I remembered.

His nose still had the bend in it from the time a patient's father broke it.

"Hi, Jo," he said.

For one second all I could think was that he had not come to my mother's funeral.

I had decided, standing at that grave alone with Eli on my hip, that I would never forgive it.

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"Eli called me."

"Eli doesn't have your number."

"He has your old phone." Erik took a small blue phone out of his jacket pocket and held it up. "Craig threw it in a drawer when you upgraded. Eli found it. He's called me every Sunday for six weeks."

I looked at the phone.

Eli had never told me.

"I came as soon as I heard you were out of the hospital," Erik said. "I'll go if you say so. Just tell me you're all right."

I started to say, "I'm fine."

My knees went out instead.

The porch tilted. His hand closed around my elbow before I could grab the door, and he held me up with no effort at all.

It was a warm, steady, square hand, and it did not let go.

"Okay," he said quietly. "You're not fine."

"I'm standing."

"I'm holding you standing. Different thing."

I laughed. It came out cracked and surprised, and it was the first time I had laughed in two weeks.

"Come in," I said. "Not the front room. The kitchen."

Dorothea was at the counter folding a dish towel.

"Dorothea, this is my husband's brother, Erik," I said. "Erik, this is Dorothea, who helps with me."

"Pleased to meet you, dear," Dorothea said. She smiled with her mouth only.

"Ma'am," Erik said.

She looked at him a moment longer than a person looks at a stranger.

Then she went upstairs with the towel and I heard her stop on the landing, where she could hear us.

I turned the radio on.

Erik watched me do it. He sat down at my kitchen table and put his forearms on it.

"Eli told me about Britt," he said, low. "Six weeks ago. I told him to tell you."

"He didn't."

"He said you were too sad. I didn't know your number anymore. Craig had changed it."

"Craig changed my number?"

"The number I knew rings in a drawer somewhere."

I sat down across from him.

I remembered the day, five months ago, Craig had brought me a new phone "with better battery for bedrest."

He had set up everything on it.

"I wrote you letters," Erik said. "Not many. You never answered."

"I never got letters."

His eyes moved over my face.

"Then somebody has been carrying our mail for four years," he said.

I did not know what to say to that, so I said, "Eli says Britt sleeps in Craig's room."

"I know."

"I saw it. I have thirty days of video."

"I figured."

"And I'm not going to scream, or call my mother-in-law, or throw his clothes on the lawn."

"Why not?" Erik said.

"Because I want to know why everyone in this house needs me so quiet."

Erik sat back.

He studied me, long enough that I felt it in my chest.

"Then you're the calmest woman I've ever met," he said.

"I'm not calm," I said.

I turned the radio up another notch and kept my voice low.

"I'm counting."

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