The Man in the Cottage

Chapter One

Kelly

The house looks smaller than I remember.

I pull into the gravel driveway and sit there for a minute with the engine running, just looking at it.

White siding, green shutters, the porch swing my grandfather hung forty years ago that Grandma never let anyone replace even when the chains started to rust. The azaleas along the front are overgrown, brushing against the windows like they're trying to get inside, and I make a mental note to trim them back before they scratch the glass.

I haven't been here since last summer. Grandma came up to New York for Thanksgiving because she said she wanted to see the parade, but really I think she just wanted to make sure I was eating, make sure I wasn't working myself into the ground at that job I hated.

She'd shown up at my apartment with a suitcase full of Tupperware—collard greens, mac and cheese, a sweet potato pie that barely survived the Amtrak—and spent four days asking pointed questions about my sleep schedule and my love life and whether I'd thought any more about that book I wanted to write.

She always could see right through me.

I turn off the car and the silence rushes in.

No sirens, no honking, no neighbors fighting through the walls or playing music at 2 a.m. or letting their dogs bark for hours.

Just birds and the wind moving through the bare trees and the creak of the porch swing shifting in the breeze.

It's a quiet that crawls inside your ears and makes itself at home, and I'm not sure yet if I love it or if it's going to drive me slowly insane.

This is really happening. I quit my job.

I packed up my apartment. I told everyone I was taking a year to write a book, and they all smiled at me with that look people give you when they think you're having a breakdown but they're too polite to say so.

Maybe I am. Maybe driving eight hours to live alone in my dead grandmother's house is exactly the thing people do when they've lost the plot entirely.

Or maybe it's the sanest thing I've ever done. I guess I'll find out.

My phone buzzes in my cupholder. A text from my mom: Did you make it?

Just pulled in, I type back. About to go inside.

Call me later. Love you.

Love you too.

I shove the phone in my jacket pocket and grab my suitcase from the trunk—just one for now, the rest of my stuff coming in a moving truck next week—and walk up the front steps.

The third one still creaks, that same spot it's been creaking since I was eight years old.

The porch swing still has that rust stain on the left armrest from the summer I spilled Hawaiian Punch all over it and cried because I thought Grandma would be mad.

She wasn't. She just laughed and said it gave the swing character.

Everything is exactly the same as it always was, except the woman who made it home isn't here anymore.

The key sticks in the lock the way it always has, requiring that specific jiggle-and-lift motion Grandma taught me when I was old enough to let myself in.

The door swings open and the smell hits me immediately—lavender and old books and something baked, even though no one's baked anything in this kitchen for months.

It's the smell of every summer I spent here as a kid, every Christmas visit, every long weekend when I needed to escape the city and remember who I was before I became someone who sent emails for a living.

I set my suitcase down in the foyer and just stand there for a second, letting it wash over me.

The living room is to my left, exactly as she kept it.

The floral couch that's older than I am, its cushions worn soft in the spots where she liked to sit.

The wooden coffee table with the ring stain from a glass someone set down in 1987—my dad, according to family legend, though he still denies it.

Bookshelves lining every wall, stuffed with paperbacks and photo albums and the random things she collected over eighty-three years.

A ceramic cat with one chipped ear. A snow globe from Niagara Falls that plays "Memory" from Cats when you wind it up.

A framed photo of me at seven years old, gap-toothed and grinning, holding up a fish I caught in the creek out back.

I walk through the rooms slowly, touching things.

Running my fingers along the spines of books she'll never read again, straightening picture frames out of habit, opening drawers just to see what's inside.

Rubber bands. Expired coupons. A collection of takeout menus from restaurants that probably closed years ago.

The junk drawer in the kitchen is a time capsule—batteries of questionable charge, a screwdriver with a stripped head, Christmas cards from people whose names I don't recognize, a single earring that must have lost its mate decades ago.

The kitchen still has that window over the sink, the one that looks out at the backyard.

I fill a glass with water from the tap—it tastes different here, cleaner, less like the inside of a pipe—and stand there drinking it, letting my eyes wander across the yard.

The old oak tree I used to climb, its branches bare against the gray sky.

The garden that's nothing but dead stalks now, the tomato cages still standing like skeletons waiting for spring.

The tree line at the back of the property where the woods start and everything else falls away.

And the guest cottage, half-hidden by a stand of pine trees.

I set down my glass.

The cottage windows aren't dark. There's a light on inside, warm yellow against the gray February afternoon, and smoke is curling from the small chimney I forgot it even had.

There's a truck parked beside it—a black Ford, newer model, mud splattered on the wheel wells—that definitely wasn't there the last time I visited.

I'm out the back door before I've fully thought it through, my sneakers soaking in the wet overgrown grass.

The cottage looks different than I remember, and it takes me a second to figure out why.

The trim is freshly painted, a clean white that stands out against the weathered siding.

The small porch has been swept clean, no leaves or debris piled in the corners.

There's a welcome mat by the front door—a plain brown one, nothing fancy—which makes no sense because this building is supposed to be empty.

I'm halfway across the yard, my heart beating faster than I want to admit, when the cottage door swings open.

I scream.

Not my proudest moment. But I was not expecting a man to suddenly fill the doorway of a building on property I now own. A large man. A very large man who is now looking at me like I've lost my mind, which, fair, I did just scream at him for opening a door.

He freezes. I freeze. We stare at each other across twenty feet of dead grass, and for a long second neither of us moves.

He's tall—really tall, maybe six-two or six-three—with broad shoulders that take up most of the doorframe and dark hair that's a little too long, curling at the collar of his flannel shirt.

Jeans, work boots, a coffee mug in his hand that says WORLD'S OKAYEST brOTHER.

He looks like he just woke up from a nap, eyes a little heavy, jaw covered in a few days of stubble.

There's something careful about the way he holds himself, like he's used to being the biggest person in the room and tries not to make it everyone else's problem.

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice low and a little rough. He holds up his free hand like I'm a deer about to bolt. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"Who are you?" My voice comes out higher than I want, a little breathless from the adrenaline. "Why are you in my grandmother's cottage?"

Something shifts in his face. Recognition, maybe.

"You're Kelly," he says. Not a question.

"How do you know my name?"

He sets the coffee mug down on the porch railing and steps onto the grass, moving slowly, like he's trying not to spook me any more than he already has.

"Your grandmother talked about you. A lot.

" He stops a few feet away, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"I'm Travis. I've been staying here for a few months. I had an arrangement with Mrs. Dawson."

An arrangement. My grandmother had an arrangement with this man—this stranger in a flannel shirt who knows my name and lives in her cottage and apparently has siblings he's not too impressed with.

"What kind of arrangement?"

"She let me rent the place. Informal, mostly. I helped out around the property when she needed it, fixed things, kept an eye on the place. And she gave me somewhere quiet to stay." He pauses, and his jaw tightens just a little. "I'm sorry about your grandmother. She was a good woman."

He says it like he means it. Not like the people at the funeral who squeezed my hand and said she's in a better place like they were reading off a script. Just simple and real.

"The lawyer didn't mention you," I say.

"I don't think she ever put anything in writing. It was just an understanding." He shifts his weight, looking uncomfortable for the first time. "Look, I know this is your property now. If you want me gone, I'll go. I can be out by the end of the week."

I should say yes. I don't know this man. I don't know anything about him except that he's big and quiet and apparently lived fifty yards from my grandmother while I was in New York worrying about click-through rates and email open metrics.

But the cottage trim is freshly painted. The porch has been swept. He knew my name before I said it, which means my grandmother talked about me, which means she trusted him enough to share pieces of her life.

"You don't have to leave," I hear myself say. "Not yet, anyway. Let me figure some things out first."

He nods, and something in his shoulders loosens just slightly. "I'll stay out of your way. You won't even know I'm here."

"Okay."

"Okay."

We stand there another moment, the wind moving through the pines behind him. He's got a face that's hard to read—steady dark eyes, a mouth that doesn't seem to smile much. I can't tell if he's relieved or just waiting for me to change my mind.

"I'm usually up early," he finally says. "If you need anything fixed or moved or whatever, just let me know."

"Thanks."

He nods again and turns back toward the cottage. He takes the porch steps two at a time, grabs his coffee mug off the railing, and pauses at the door with his hand on the frame.

"Welcome home, Kelly."

The door closes behind him, and I'm standing alone in my grandmother's backyard with wet shoes and no idea what I just agreed to.

I walk back to the house slowly, my mind turning it over. Travis. An arrangement. Somewhere quiet to stay. My grandmother, who told me about her book club and her garden and the gossip at church, who called me every Sunday without fail, never once mentioned the man living in her backyard.

Why?

I kick off my wet sneakers at the back door and leave them on the mat to dry. The kitchen feels different now, knowing he's out there. Not bad different. Just... different. Like the house shifted slightly while I wasn't looking and now I have to learn it all over again.

I find it three hours later.

I've unpacked my suitcase and made the bed in my old room, the one with the quilt Grandma sewed from my baby clothes and the window that looks out at the oak tree.

I've eaten canned soup standing at the kitchen counter because I'm not ready to sit at the dining table alone, not ready to look at the empty chair where she always sat.

I've texted my sister back and ignored three emails from my old job that I definitely should have unsubscribed from before I left.

Now I'm on the living room floor with a box of papers from Grandma's desk, trying to find anything the lawyer might need, trying to make myself useful in a house that doesn't need me for anything.

That's when I pull out the address book.

It's old-fashioned, the kind with alphabetical tabs and a faded floral cover, filled with handwriting that got shakier toward the end.

I flip through it half looking for Travis and half just wanting to see her handwriting, to trace the loops of her letters and pretend she's still here, just in the other room, about to call me in for dinner.

There's nothing under T. Nothing under H either, since I never got his last name.

What I find is a note tucked between the H and I tabs. A small square of paper, folded once, her handwriting steady and clear from before the tremor set in.

I unfold it expecting a grocery list, a phone number, something ordinary.

My stomach drops.

If anything happens to me, let Travis stay. He's a good one. He just needs somewhere to be invisible for a while. Don't ask too many questions. Just trust me.

I read it again. And again.

Invisible.

Don't ask too many questions.

I look up, out the window, at the warm yellow light glowing from the cottage across the dark yard. The smoke still curling from the chimney. The black truck parked in the shadows.

What the hell did my grandmother get herself into?