Read a preview
Chapter 1
Chapter One: The Return
The train hissed as it pulled into the small-town station, a place that still smelled like wet wood and diesel and fall leaves. Anna stepped down with a single bag and a knot in her throat she would not name. The platform was quiet, the way it always was when you arrived somewhere you used to know. It was early afternoon, and the sky was the blank gray of late October, the kind that made you pull your coat tighter and move quickly.
Michael was waiting near the end of the platform, rocking on his heels, pretending not to watch her approach. He had grown a beard, kept short and neat, as if tidiness could make up for the rest. He nodded without hugging her. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said. It was enough.
They turned to watch the last few passengers seep away, then looked down the road that led to the street where their father’s house sat. The mechanic’s garage across the way had the same metal sign, the corners rusted. The coffee shop had a new name but the same mismatched chairs. A woman at the bus stop laughed, sharp and high, and it startled Anna with the memory of summers when laughter had come easy.
“She’s not here yet?” Anna asked.
Michael shrugged. “Grace? She texted. Said she’d drive. Left at dawn. You know how she is. She’ll be late or she’ll be early. Never in the middle.”
“She was always on time when Dad was around,” Anna said. She surprised herself with the bitterness in her voice, and she hated that Michael looked at her and then away.
They walked toward the courthouse where Mr. Ellison, their father’s lawyer, had set the time for the will reading. The square had fresh mums in planters and a display of pumpkins in front of the library. Someone had drawn faces on a few of them. The air had a bite to it, and their hands settled into their coat pockets in the same moment, a small, absurd choreography only siblings share.
At the courthouse steps, Grace swung into view, late by eight minutes, hair swept into a low bun, cheeks flushed from the wind and from being in a hurry. She wore a navy dress and a long cardigan and that necklace she never took off, a simple silver circle.
“Sorry,” she said, breathless, not sorry. She glanced between them, searching their faces. She was twenty-eight now, not twenty. But she was still the youngest, and to Anna she was still the girl who used to crawl into bed with her during thunderstorms.
“You made it,” Michael said. He couldn’t keep the relief out of his voice. It softened something in Anna she did not want softened.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said. Then they went inside, the three of them moving through the old wooden doors into the smell of wax and paper and history. Their father had brought them here once, when they were little, for a town fair. He had bought them cotton candy and placed a firm hand between their shoulder blades so they wouldn’t get lost.
He had died two days ago. The words had been spoken to them over the phone in that kind, helpless voice doctors use, and their minds had done what minds do: they had put the words somewhere safe and separate and walked around them.
Now they were here, and the words sat on the table between them like something alive.
