The Fiancé

Diane Carter invites you to breakfast at 7:15 the next morning by knocking on your back door with a spatula.

"Pancakes," she says. "Blueberry. You're coming."

"Diane, I've got work."

"You've got pancakes." She's already walking back toward the hedge, robe flapping. "Lily's fiancé got in last night. I want you to meet him before the whole town does."

You stand in the doorway in yesterday's T-shirt, thinking about a black SUV and a man looking up at your window.

Then you go and shave.

The Carter kitchen hasn't changed. Yellow walls, rooster clock, a magnet from Mackinac on the fridge holding up a ten-year-old photo you try very hard not to look at. Two kids on a raft, sunburned, laughing at something off camera.

Diane's eyes follow yours to the picture. For a second her smile tightens. Then she pushes a plate at you. "Sit."

Lily comes down the stairs in a sundress, hair wet from the shower. She stops on the bottom step when she sees you, and her face does something complicated before it settles into a smile.

"You came, Ethan."

"Your mom threatened me with a spatula."

"She does that." Lily slides into the chair across from you. Under the table, her bare foot bumps your ankle. She moves it away fast. "Brody's on a call. He's always on a call. He'll be down in a..."

"Here he is."

Brody Whitaker walks into the kitchen like he's walking into a boardroom he already owns.

He's handsome in the expensive way: tall, dark hair cut close, a watch that costs more than the Juniper. White shirt with the sleeves rolled exactly twice. He kisses the top of Lily's head on his way past, then turns to you with his hand already out.

"You must be the famous neighbor."

His grip is warm and dry and about twenty percent too firm. He holds it a beat too long, smiling the whole time.

"Ethan," Lily says. "This is Brody. Brody, this is..."

"I know who this is." Brody sits down beside her and takes a pancake off the stack without asking. "Lily talks about you, you know. The raft. The flashlight thing. The boat with the ridiculous name."

"The Juniper isn't ridiculous," Lily says.

"It's a street, babe." He pats her hand. Then he looks at you again, and his eyes are friendly and very, very awake. "I saw your light on last night. Hope I didn't wake you pulling in."

"I was up."

"Me too. Always." He pours syrup in a neat spiral. "So. Lily says you're doing the honors in August."

"Best man," Lily says.

"Best man," Brody repeats, like he's tasting it. "I love that. Very modern. Very Lily." He smiles at you. "I'm glad she has someone from home. She doesn't talk about home much, honestly. I had to drag the whole story out of her."

Lily's fork stops halfway to her mouth.

"What story?" you ask.

"Oh, you know." Brody waves his knife. "Small town. Dad left. Everybody knows your business. She couldn't get out fast enough." He grins at Diane. "No offense, Diane. Your pancakes are the best thing in Michigan."

Diane laughs a little too loudly. Lily stares at her plate.

You cut a bite of pancake. You don't eat it.

It's Diane who brings up work.

"Brody's up here on business too," she says, refilling coffee. "Isn't that lucky? He can work and help with the wedding."

"Lucky," Brody agrees. "We've got a project on the waterfront. Whitaker Lakefront, that's my company. We do lakeside communities. Boutique hotels, marinas, that kind of thing." He looks at you. "Actually, maybe you can help me. There's an old boatyard out on the point. Shed, slip, a crane that looks like it's from the Civil War. Do you know who owns it?"

The kitchen goes quiet. The rooster clock ticks.

Lily has stopped breathing. You can tell because you've watched her stop breathing before, at the top of the high rock, before every jump.

"I do," you say.

Brody's eyebrows go up. "Do you?"

"Lantern Point Boatyard. My grandfather built it. I run it now."

For one second, a single second, Brody Whitaker's smile goes still. Not gone. Just paused, like a video buffering.

Then it's back, brighter than before.

"Well, how about that." He laughs. "Small town. Everybody really does know everybody." He takes a sip of coffee. "We should talk sometime. Just casual. I've got a lot of respect for old businesses."

"It's not for sale."

"Nobody said anything about sale." Brody spreads his hands. "I just like to know my neighbors."

Under the table, Lily's foot finds your ankle again. This time she doesn't move it away. She presses down, once, hard, like a signal. You just don't know what it means.

Brody's phone rings again before the coffee is done. He kisses Lily's temple, says "Sorry, Chicago," and disappears onto the porch. Through the screen door you hear him say, "No. No, I said Friday," in a voice with no smile in it at all.

Diane starts clearing plates. Lily jumps up to help, and when she reaches past you for your mug, something soft lands in your lap.

A paper napkin, folded into a tiny square.

You don't open it until you're back through the hedge, standing in your own kitchen with your heart doing something stupid.

Ten digits in blue ink, in handwriting you'd know anywhere. The loopy L she's had since third grade. Underneath:

new number. for best man stuff. (and other stuff.) — L

You stand there long enough that the coffee maker beeps three times to tell you it's done, and you don't even notice.

You spend the day at the yard trying not to think.

Walt asks about breakfast. You tell him the pancakes were good. He grunts like he knows that's not the whole story and hands you the heat gun.

You strip old varnish off the Juniper's transom until your arms ache. Every time a car goes by on the point road, you look up. Twice it's a truck. Once it's a black SUV, slowing near the gate, then speeding away.

"Who's that?" Walt asks.

"The fiancé."

Walt watches the dust settle on the road. "Huh," is all he says. Then, after a while: "Man drives slow past a place he wants."

You save the number in your phone at four in the afternoon. You type Lil and then delete it and type Lily and then delete that too. You leave it as L, the way she signed it.

You don't text her.

You tell yourself it's because she's engaged. Because Brody is staying at the Harbor Inn twenty minutes away. Because ten years is ten years, and a napkin doesn't change that.

At 11:40 that night, you're lying in bed with the window cracked, listening to the lake.

The light in Lily's room is on. Her shadow crosses the curtain, stops, crosses back. Stops again.

You watch her pace for ten minutes. You watch her sit on the windowsill, a dark shape against the yellow glow, holding something small that lights her face blue.

A phone.

Your own phone is facedown on the nightstand. You don't touch it.

Across the hedge, Lily's shadow lifts the phone. Lowers it. Lifts it again. You can almost hear her arguing with herself, the way she did before every test and every jump.

Then her thumb moves.

Your nightstand buzzes once against the wood.

You turn the phone over. One new message from L.

You haven't read a word Lily Carter wrote you in ten years, and your hands are shaking as you open it.