Just sit.Be a woman in a cabin who knows that another person on a porch above herneeds the morning to be his own.
I thinkabout the script.I knew the script because of my brother.
My brother was deployed twice and came home the second time with the same wound on the inside as the man on the ridge. We went through one panic attack on a fishing dock and one episode in a Walmart parking lot before he found a doctor who taughthim a four-count and a way to puthisback to a wall. He died in a car accident a year later, sober, at peace with himself and not at peace with my mother.Myfamily closed around the loss like a fist and never spoke of him again.
The four-count is the only thing of his I still have.
That, and a stubborn streak.
I drink my coffee. And I don’t go up.
I workonthe cabin until ten, patching a screen on the back door and cleaningthe firebox. I write a list on the inside flap of the cinnamon roll bag, the way Mae did for me—what I need to learn this week, what I need to ask June, and what I need to do at the cabin that doesn’t involve climbing on the roof.
At ten, I hear footsteps on my porch.Heavyanddeliberate. Familiar.
I open the door before he can knock.
Sullivan looks at me.
He’sfreshly washed,hair still damp,beard trimmed slightly, the kind of grooming a man does whenhe’strying to remindhimselfhe’sa person.He’swearing a clean flannel under a different jacketandsmells like castile soap and pine.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.”
“I made coffee.”
“I’d take coffee.”
He steps in. He’s never been inside before.
Standing in the middle of the front room, he looks around like a man visiting a placehe’sbeen thinking about. His eyes catch on the table because the kitchen chair I bought from Aunt Rosa’s neighbor is now at it, and the front room has the small amber rug I unrolled yesterday. A candle burns next to a stack of romance novels I refuse to be embarrassed about.
Sullivansits where I point, at the kitchen table. I pour him coffeeandput a plate of toast in front of him. He nods and eats.Thesilenceisn’tuncomfortable, butithas a weight to it now thatwe’resharing it instead of avoiding it.
He sets his mug down, his eyes on the table.“I’d like to apologize for yesterday.”
“You don’t owe me an apology.”
“I’d like to make it anyway.”
I close my mouth.
“I lost time,”he says, choosing every word with the careful, specific attention of the man who took a single nail out ofa board he wantedtopreserve.“Ithappens.It’snot as bad as it used to be sincethe therapy. Ithasn’tbeen that bad in a year. It surprised me.”
His jaw works.“I appreciate how you handled it.”
“I had practice.”
He looks up.
“My brother,”I murmur.“Twodeployments. He had ascripttoo. Differentone, same idea. He died in a car accident a year after he got home, but itwasn’t—”I stop, then make myself say it.“Itwasn’tbecause of that.He’ddone a lot of work.”
Sullivan’s eyes are very pale and very steady.
“What was his name?”
“Henry.”
