They Thought I Was Asleep, So I Let Them novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Two Keys
The hut stood at the end of a gravel track on the Plön lake, and it leaned.
"It's been leaning since I was nine," Florian said. "It's structurally sound."
"You're an architect."
"I'm telling you as one."
Nils was already out of the car with the bags, and he stopped in the middle of the path and spread his arms.
"Look at that," he said. "Water. Trees. A pier with a hole in it. Nobody who has ever met any of us."
It was a cold, clear Saturday in November, and the sky over the lake was a hard pale blue.
We had left Hamburg at eight.
I had spent the drive in the back seat with my feet on the console and a thermos in my lap, listening to the two of them argue about which of them could not read a map.
The hut had a stove, one big bed and a table with four mismatched chairs.
Florian lit the stove while Nils checked the cupboards and found a tin of sardines from a year nobody could name.
"Don't," I said.
"I'm a nurse. I know what's in a tin."
"You know what's in a person."
"It's a very similar skill."
We ate bread and cheese on the pier in our coats, with our boots hanging over the water.
Nils told the story of the man who had come into his ER on a Sunday with a fork in his hand and a story, and I laughed until I had to put down my cup.
Florian listened with his chin on his fist, and looked at me, and not at Nils.
That was the thing I could not stop noticing.
No one hurried and no one was waiting for the dark.
In the afternoon we walked the whole way round the lake, three people in a row on a narrow path, and Nils sang badly the whole time.
At four the light began to go.
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