The House on Alder Street

Julia cut the engine in the drive on Alder Street and sat with her hands on the wheel. Rain tapped the roof. The house looked smaller than she remembered and worse than the photos the agent had sent. Paint peeled along the eaves. One porch step had gone soft.

She got out, suitcase in one hand, key in the other, and went up. The lock stuck. She put her shoulder to the door and it gave.

The hall smelled like closed rooms and old varnish. She set the suitcase down and walked through to the kitchen before she meant to. The same table. The same window over the sink, rain running on the glass. She had stood at that counter a hundred evenings with a mug of coffee, waiting for the sound of a truck.

A knock came from the front. She went back. Through the screen she saw a man in a work jacket, tape measure on his belt, a clipboard under one arm.

Nate.

He looked at her and did not smile. Rain darkened the shoulders of his jacket. He was thirty-eight, same as she was, and the years showed in the set of his mouth more than anything else.

“Julia.”

“Nate.” Her voice came out thin. “The agent said a carpenter. I didn’t know it was you.”

“I bid finish work in this part of town. She sent the listing. I almost turned it down.” He glanced past her into the hall. “You going to let me in, or do we do this on the step?”

She pushed the screen open. He stepped in and wiped his boots on the mat that had always been there. Neither of them moved toward the kitchen, and then both of them did.

They stopped in the doorway. The table sat between them. Nate set the clipboard on it and looked at the chair he used to take, the one with the split rung.

“Still that chair,” he said.

“I didn’t throw anything out. I just got here.”

“From Seattle.”

“This morning. Flight, then the rental.” She filled the kettle because her hands needed a job. “Coffee?”

“Water’s fine.” He opened a cabinet, found a glass, and ran the tap. The pipes knocked. “They always did that.”

She made coffee for herself and stood with the mug. He drank his water standing up. The rain on the window filled the quiet.

“You want the walkthrough,” she said.

“That’s what I’m here for.”

They started in the kitchen because they were already in it. Nate ran a hand along the cabinet faces, opened one, shut it. A hinge sagged.

“These can be saved if you want them saved. Or I pull them and put in new. New is cleaner for a sale.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You’ll need to know. Buyers don’t wait on maybe.”

He marked the clipboard and moved on. She followed him into the living room. The sofa was gone. The built-in shelves were still there, and one of them still held the dent where a lamp had fallen the winter they stayed in and didn’t go anywhere.

Nate crouched and pressed the floorboard by the hearth. It rocked.

“This needs a sister under it. Not cosmetic.” He looked up at her. “You remember when this went?”

“Yes.”

“You said you’d call someone. You didn’t.”

“I was leaving by then.”

He stood. “Right.”

The dining room was next. The table was too big for the room and always had been. She had eaten at one end of it with a laptop and a mug, late, the light over the table the only one on in the house. Nate measured the window casing and frowned at a gap where the trim had pulled away from the wall.

“Water got in here. I’ll open it up and see how far. Could be a day’s work. Could be the sill.”

“Tell me when you know.”

“I will.” He didn’t look at her when he said it.

Upstairs, the hall runner was curled at the edges. He noted it and moved on. The small room at the front had been a workroom once, hers, with a desk under the window and a view of the street. The desk was still there. Boxes sat on it, taped shut, labels in her handwriting from years ago. She had not opened them when she packed to go. She had meant to come back for them.

Nate tested the window. It stuck halfway. He worked it down again and the rain sounded louder.

“Stick windows all along this side,” he said. “I can plane them. Cheap fix. Looks cared for.”

“Do that.”

He wrote it down. His handwriting was the same, tight and slanted. She watched his hand on the pen and then made herself look at the wall instead.

The back bedroom was the one she had used when she came to stay. The bed was stripped. A crack ran across the ceiling from the corner to the light. Nate stood under it and tapped the plaster with a knuckle.

“Cosmetic if it’s dry. I’ll check the attic later.” He turned. “You sleeping here?”

“Until it sells.”

“Alone in this place.”

“It’s a house, Nate. Not a story.”

“It is to me.” He walked out before she could answer.

They finished the hall bath, the linen closet with its warped door, the landing where the rail wobbled under his hand. He talked prices in short lines. She answered in shorter ones. Every room put something between them that neither of them picked up.

Back downstairs he stopped at the kitchen table again and added a last note.

“That’s the bones of it. I’ll write the bid tonight and email it.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” He reached for a drawer under the counter, the one where odds and ends had always lived, looking for a pencil that had rolled off the clipboard. The drawer stuck. He pulled harder. It came out crooked, and a stack of paper slid forward.

Under the takeout menus and a coil of twine sat an envelope, yellowed at the edges. Her name was not on it. His was.

Nate, in her hand, and the year she had written under it before she lost her nerve.

He held it up. “This yours?”

Her stomach dropped. “Put it back.”

“It’s got my name on it.”

“I never sent it. That means it isn’t yours.”

He turned it over. The flap was tucked. “You wrote this when?”

“When I was twenty-four. Before I went.” She set her mug down too hard. Coffee jumped the rim. “Nate. Put it back.”

He didn’t. He slid a finger under the flap and drew out two pages. She crossed the kitchen and reached for them. He lifted them out of her reach, taller, and his eyes moved over the first lines.

“You don’t get to read that,” she said.

“You wrote it to me.”

“And I didn’t send it. There’s a difference.”

He read anyway. She watched his face change, not much, a tightening at the eyes. He got through the first page. She saw the second line of the second page and stepped in and took the pages out of his hand. The paper tore a little at the corner. She folded them badly and shoved them into her pocket.

“That’s enough,” she said.

“You said you were already gone when you wrote that. You said you didn’t know how to stand in this kitchen and tell me.” His voice was low. “You stood in this kitchen every night.”

“I couldn’t do it to your face.”

“So you did it from an airport.”

“I called.”

“You called from the gate. Two minutes. You said the job was the job and you’d write.” He nodded at her pocket. “That was the writing.”

“I was a coward. I know that.”

“Good. Say it again outside. I need air.”

He walked out the back door onto the porch. Rain came in under the roof in a fine mist. She followed because leaving him with half a letter was worse than going after him.

The porch boards were dark with water. The soft step creaked under his boot. He stood at the rail with his back to her, shoulders up against the cold.

“Why,” he said.

“I told you. The job.”

“A job is a reason to move. It’s not a reason to vanish.” He turned. Rain clung to his hair. “You had a life here. We had one. You packed a suitcase and left a letter in a drawer like I was a problem you could file.”

“I didn’t file you.”

“You didn’t look at me either.”

“If I had looked at you I wouldn’t have gone.” The words came out before she could trim them. “And I had to go. The offer was the work I’d been chasing. If I stayed I would have hated the staying, and then I would have hated you for it. I didn’t want that.”

“So you chose the version where I got to hate you from here.”

“I didn’t want you to hate me.”

“You don’t get to pick that.” He laughed once, no humor in it. “Fourteen years, Julia. I built a shop. I bought a place of my own. I stopped waiting. And you walk back in to sell this house and drink coffee in that kitchen like the drawer doesn’t exist.”

“I didn’t know the letter was still there.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“You left without giving me a real ending. You want me to price your windows and plane your doors and pretend we’re two people who met this morning.” Rain ran off the gutter and hit the rail between them. “I won’t do the pretending.”

“I’m not asking you to pretend. I’m asking you to bid the work.”

“And after the work?”

“The house sells. I go back.”

“There it is.” He stepped closer. Water darkened the cuff of her sleeve where the mist reached her. “You’re already gone again. You just haven’t bought the ticket.”

“You don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I know what you did. I read the start of it. You were scared, and you were already on your way, and you wanted me to forgive you on paper so you wouldn’t have to hear me say no.”

“I wanted you to know I—” She stopped. The rest of it was in the letter, and she was not going to give him that out here, not like this. “I wanted you to know it wasn’t nothing. Leaving you wasn’t nothing.”

“It cost me a year I don’t get back. Longer than a year.” His jaw worked. “I would have come with you if you’d asked. You didn’t ask. You decided I was the thing you’d outgrow.”

“That isn’t what I thought.”

“Then tell me what you thought. All of it. Not the job line.”

She opened her mouth and closed it. The real shape of it sat behind her teeth, the fear, the offer, the way she had believed she would become smaller if she stayed. She could not get it into a sentence he would accept. “I can’t. Not clean. Not today.”

“Then don’t stand there and ask me to be fine.”

“I’m not asking you to be fine.”

“What are you asking?”

She didn’t have an answer that wasn’t a reach. The rain thickened. A car went by on Alder Street, tires loud on the wet pavement, and then it was only the two of them and the drip off the roof.

Nate looked at her mouth and looked away, angry at himself for it. She saw that. She had always seen that.

“Nate.”

“Don’t.”

She stepped in anyway. He didn’t step back. Her hand found his wrist, the wet cuff, the heat of his skin under it. He went still.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

“I know.”

He turned his wrist and caught her hand. His other hand came up to her face, palm against her cheek, thumb at the corner of her mouth. Rain on his fingers. She leaned into it. He swore under his breath and kissed her.

It was not careful. Fourteen years sat in it, and the argument, and the letter in her pocket crushed against his coat when he pulled her in. She kissed him back. Her free hand went into his hair, damp, shorter than it used to be. He made a sound against her mouth and deepened the kiss, one hand still on her face, the other sliding from her wrist to lace their fingers.

She rose onto her toes. The porch rail pressed her hip. His mouth was warm and the rest of him was cold from the rain, jacket soaked through where she held him. She didn’t think about the bid or the flight or the drawer. She thought about his hand in her hair and the way he kissed like he had been angry for years and was spending it here.

He broke it first. Not far. Their foreheads touched. His breath hit her mouth. His fingers were still in her hair. Hers were still caught in his.

For a second she thought he might kiss her again.

He didn’t. He let go of her hand. He stepped back until the rain off the gutter fell between them. His face had closed.

“You’re selling,” he said. “You’re leaving.”