Page 7 of Until the Storm Breaks
Heat crawls up my neck. “I had obligations…”
“Right. Obligations.” She crosses her arms. “She’s been gone three days.”
“What do you want me to say?” I ask defensively.
“Nothing. I just—” She pauses, and her face hardens. “I held her hand while she died, Calvin. And for three days after, I’ve been the one dealing with her cabin, her things while you what? Worked up the courage to come home?”
“Well, I guess that makes you the better person,” I say, and immediately regret it.
“No,” she says, “it just makes me the person who was here.”
Her words land like a slap, but she isn’t wrong. “Yeah, well.” I look past her at the cabins, jaw tight. “We all grieve differently.”
She wipes the dirt from her cheek, and when she looks at me again, the anger has drained away, leaving just exhaustion.
“Laila’s been sleeping in my cabin when she’s not with Theo,” Maren says, clearly wanting to move past this. “She can stay with you if you want, but she’ll cry all night. She’ll scratch at the door until your ears bleed. Your choice.”
The dog looks between us, glove hanging from her mouth like a prize. Her tail has stopped wagging.
“Better that she stay with you,” I mutter, adjusting my grip on the duffel. “I need to get settled in the house anyway.
Maren lets out a short laugh, turning back toward her cabin. “Good luck with that, Professor.”
The way she says “Professor” makes it sound like an insult. Like she’s seen the viral TikToks of me reading from my book, the one I just tossed off the bluff, maybe even knows about that stupid “Millennial Hemingway” nickname. Like she knows exactly what kind of man I am—the kind who writes about loss from a safe distance instead of showing up for it.
I don’t know what she means about the house until I set my duffel and Mom’s urn on the porch and open the front door. I already knew about the storm damage. Dominic sent photos. But photos on a phone don’t capture how a house feels when it’sslowly giving up. The smell hits first: musty and tired, like opening a cabin that’s been closed all winter.
I step inside the house,Midnight Manoras my mom used to call it with a wink, and let my eyes adjust to the dim interior. The living room furniture sits under sheets like ghosts. The kitchen is a graveyard of good intentions. There’s a newish refrigerator with the Energy Star sticker still attached, but the stove’s been disconnected and pulled away from the wall. The window over the sink is cracked in three places, held together with duct tape.
I test the stairs going up. The third one’s gone soft, probably from the water damage after the fallen tree caused a burst pipe.
At the top of the stairs, I start checking rooms. Dominic’s old room is first. This is where the tree fell through the roof. They’ve covered the hole with OSB board that’s buckling from a year of rain. The smell of wet particle board hits me before I even fully open the door.
The other rooms aren’t much better. Two are packed with boxes from after the storm, sealed and labeled in Dominic’s handwriting.
I step through the doorway of one and lift the flap of the nearest box. Mom’s good china wrapped in newspaper dated thirteen months ago. The day we packed everything so the contractors could start work. We’d moved Mom to the cabin, thinking distance would help.
It didn’t. That first morning, she got past the nurse and showed up in the doorway crying that strangers were destroying Dad’s house. The crew just stood there, hammers in hand, watching this confused woman beg them to stop. Dominic called it off. Any construction sound after that would set her off, even from the cabin. Now she’s gone and the house is still waiting.
I rub my face with one hand and move on, walking past what used to be my bedroom, converted to Mom’s sewing roomafter I left for college. No bed there, and I’m not sure I want the memories.
I check the room at the end of the hall, the one Theo and Alex used to share. Jack’s leather jacket is lying across the bed—the only bed now, since Alex took his when he moved out years ago. His boots are kicked off by the door, sheets tangled, a half-empty bottle of tequila on the nightstand next to someone’s earring. There’s no sign of his bike out front, so he must’ve taken a ride somewhere. Typical Jack. My youngest brother showed up before me even though nobody knew where he was. He staked his claim, then vanished.
The master bedroom door won’t budge when I try it. Swollen shut from moisture. I shoulder it twice, then stop. I don’t really want to sleep in my parents’ room anyway. Something about keeping that door closed lets me imagine they’re still in there. Mom reading one of her mystery novels, Dad already sound asleep after a long day at Midnight Boxing, the gym that had kept this family fed for years before mom opened the Black Lantern.
I stand in the doorway, taking it all in. The house I grew up in is dying. The place where Mom made blackberry jam every August, where Dad taught us to throw punches in the basement, where I wrote my first terrible stories at the kitchen table.
“Shit.” I pull out my phone and call Dominic.
He answers on the second ring. “What?” He sounds exactly like Dad used to when we’d interrupt him during a big fight on TV.
“The house is completely fucked,” I say, with more bite than necessary.
“Yeah, no kidding. Why do you think we’re selling? Jack already claimed the only working room upstairs. You’ll have to take the right cabin.”
“The cabin? Where Mom lived?”And just died.But I don’t say that.
“I know, I know. But I need you on the property to deal with house and estate stuff, and it’s the only spot that works. We had it cleaned out. Maren helped a lot. Shared bathroom and kitchen in the middle, Maren’s on the left.” He pauses, takes a breath. “I know you hate being here, but try not to be a dick about it. She’s the only reason those cabins are even livable. She’s been maintaining them for free in exchange for cheaper rent.”
