At 6:20, there was nothing majestic about the lake yet.
It lay flat and blue-gray, a line of light skimming the pines on the opposite shore. From the deck, you could make out the neighbor’s buoys and the Keanes’ dock, two strips of wood stripped of color by winter after winter. A cup abandoned on the railing reflected the sky in a shallow pool of cold coffee.
Nora picked it up between two fingers.
“Cal.”
Behind the glass door came the sound of a drawer closing and an answer the glass reduced to a syllable.
“What?”
“Your cup.”
“I didn’t put it there.”
She brought it inside.
The house smelled of warm pine, floor cleaner, and the sweetish scent of medication Nora had noticed only the day before and could no longer stop smelling. On the kitchen table, Tess had arranged pill boxes in two rows, morning and evening. Jonah was still asleep on the living room couch, one leg outside the blanket. Barefoot, Cal rummaged in the refrigerator as though it had been burgled.
“You drank coffee outside,” Nora said.
“I drank coffee. Proving where is another matter.”
She set the cup in front of him.
“You’re exhausting before seven.”
“It’s a family tradition.”
His hair was whiter at the temples than it had been at Christmas. They had not seen each other since Thanksgiving. Only seven months. Last time, Cal had left Sacramento after dessert, offended because she had told their mother not to entrust the insurance paperwork to him. He had forgotten to send a form two years earlier; in Nora’s mind, that omission had created a lasting category.
Cal knew how to forget paperwork.
Tess knew care.
Jonah knew the house.
Nora knew what needed doing.
The hierarchy seemed so natural to her that she would not have thought to call it that.
“Did she sleep?” she asked.
Cal gestured toward the corridor.
“Ask Tess.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.