I sat in the silence, the draft from the door cooling the sweat on my neck. Why would his grandmother warn me about a gift from my own husband on our first morning as man and wife?
I looked down at Ethan, who was still lost in sleep, his mouth slightly open. He had lived in this house in Oconomowoc all his life, and he had always spoken of his family as a perfect, warm circle where nothing went wrong.
I wanted that circle. After my own parents divorced when I was twelve, leaving me to divide my summers between two silent apartments, I had craved a family that stayed in one place.
But the air in the bedroom now felt cold.
I slipped out of bed at quarter past six, my bare feet cold against the pine floor. The hallway smelled of old carpets and yesterday’s lake breeze.
Linda was standing at the top of the stairs, holding a small silver tray with two steaming mugs of coffee. The silver coffee pot on the sideboard downstairs must have been polished recently, but the tray she held had dark spots of tarnish near the handles.
“Good morning, Natalie,” Linda said, her voice rising in that bright, overly host-like tone she had used all through the wedding weekend.
She smiled, but her hand was trembling, causing the coffee to slosh over the rims of the mugs. A small brown puddle formed on the silver tray, creeping toward the edge.
“Let me help you with those,” I said, reaching for the tray.
“No, no, I have it,” she said, though she let me take the mugs from her.
As soon as her hands were free, Linda rubbed the back of her neck with her right hand, her thumb pressing hard into the muscle. She looked at the closed bedroom door behind me.
