Chapter Three
Kelly
I've been here four days and I still haven't unpacked the boxes in the living room.
They're sitting there in a stack by the fireplace, labeled in my own handwriting: BOOKS, OFFICE STUFF, RANDOM CRAP I COULDN'T THROW AWAY.
The moving truck came yesterday, two guys who didn't speak much and worked fast, and now my entire New York life is scattered around my grandmother's house in cardboard containers that I can't seem to make myself open.
It's fine. I have time. That's the whole point of being here—I have nothing but time.
I'm at the kitchen table with my laptop, trying to work on my book.
The thriller. The one I've been outlining for three years in the margins of meeting notes and the back pages of my journal, the one I used to daydream about while sitting in conference rooms listening to people argue about thumbnail images and autoplay settings.
I finally have the space and the silence and the freedom to actually write it, and I've been staring at the same paragraph for forty-five minutes.
The problem is the husband. He's too obvious.
Every time I try to write him, he comes out cartoonishly evil—twirling his mustache, practically wearing a sign that says I'M THE KILLER.
Real people aren't like that. Real people hide their worst parts behind ordinary faces, behind charm, behind the things they do right. That's what makes them scary.
I delete the paragraph and start again. Then delete that one too.
My phone buzzes. A text from Nicole, my college roommate: How's the hermit life treating you?
Great, I type back. I've written almost 200 words today. Might crack 300 if I really push myself.
Wow. Inspiring. You're like a machine.
I'm going to pretend that wasn't sarcasm.
It was absolutely sarcasm. Have you left the house yet?
I look out the window at the gray February sky, the bare trees, the brown grass that won't turn green for another two months at least.
I went to the grocery store, I say. That counts.
Kelly.
What?
You moved to the middle of nowhere to "find yourself" or whatever. You can't find yourself if you never leave the kitchen.
She's right and I hate it. I've been using the book as an excuse to avoid everything—the town, the people, the reality of being here alone in a house full of ghosts. It's easier to sit at this table and pretend I'm working than to actually face any of it.
I'll go for a walk later, I tell her. Happy?
Ecstatic. Talk soon. Love you.
Love you too.
I put the phone face-down and turn back to my laptop. The cursor blinks at me, patient and relentless. I have a document open with eight thousand words of notes and exactly two thousand words of actual prose, and every single one of those words feels wrong.
Maybe I should make more coffee. Coffee would help.
I'm halfway to the counter when I hear it—a thunk from somewhere beneath my feet, followed by a low gurgling sound that doesn't inspire confidence.
Then the kitchen faucet starts dripping.
Not dripping. Pouring. Water streams out of the base where it meets the sink, pooling on the counter and dripping onto the floor in a steady patter.
"No no no no no—"
I lunge for the faucet, twisting the handles, but it doesn't help.
The water keeps coming, leaking from somewhere inside the fixture itself.
I crouch down and yank open the cabinet under the sink, looking for a shutoff valve, but all I see are pipes and cleaning supplies and a mouse trap that I really hope is empty.
I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to fix anything. In New York, I called the super when things broke, and he showed up eventually and made it someone else's problem. Here there's no super. There's just me and a suitcase full of clothes and a laptop full of words that don't work.
And there's Travis.
I grab my phone and head for the back door, not even bothering to put on shoes. The grass is cold and wet under my feet as I cross the yard, and I'm halfway to the cottage when the door opens and he steps out, already frowning.
"Something's wrong with the sink," I say, slightly out of breath. "Water's going everywhere."
He doesn't ask questions. Just nods once and walks past me toward the house, his long legs covering the distance twice as fast as mine. By the time I catch up, he's already under the sink, doing something with the pipes that makes the water stop.
"Shutoff valve," he says, his voice muffled. "Needed to be replaced. I told your grandmother a few months back but she said it was fine."
"Of course she did." Grandma's approach to home repair was to ignore problems until they became emergencies. A leaky valve would've been way too theoretical for her to care about.
Travis slides out from under the sink and sits up, wiping his hands on his jeans. He's wearing a gray t-shirt today, no flannel, and I can see the shape of his arms and shoulders in a way I couldn't before. He's built like someone who uses his body for a living—not bulky, but solid. Strong.
I look away before he catches me staring.
"I can fix it," he says, getting to his feet. "I'll need to run to the hardware store, but it shouldn't take long."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know."
"I can call a plumber—"
"Kelly." He says my name like a period at the end of a sentence. Final. "It's a twenty-dollar part and thirty minutes of work. Let me fix it."
I don't know why I want to argue. Maybe because I don't like feeling useless in my own house. Maybe because accepting help from a man I barely know feels like admitting I can't handle this on my own.
But the floor is wet and my feet are cold and he's already pulling his keys out of his pocket like the matter is settled.
"Fine," I say. "Thank you."
He nods and heads for the door. I expect him to leave, but he pauses with his hand on the frame and looks back at me.
"You're working on something. On your laptop."
It's not quite a question. I wonder how he knows—if he saw me through the window, or if he just guessed.
"I'm trying to write a book," I say. "A thriller."
"Yeah?" Something shifts in his face, not quite interest but close. "What's it about?"
"A woman who finds out her husband is a serial killer." I lean against the counter, arms crossed. "It's not going well."
"What's the problem?"
I don't know why I tell him. Maybe because he asked, and no one else has.
My friends all think the book is a cute hobby, something I'll abandon once I get bored and go back to a real job.
My family thinks I'm having a breakdown.
No one has actually asked what the book is about, let alone what's giving me trouble.
"The husband," I say. "I can't figure out how to make him scary without making him obvious. Every time I write him, he's too much of a villain. But real killers don't seem like killers. That's the whole point."
Travis is quiet for a second, processing. Then he says, "Maybe you're thinking about it wrong."
"What do you mean?"
"You're trying to hide what he is. But the scariest thing isn't when someone hides who they are." He's looking at me steadily now, his dark eyes hard to read. "It's when they show you exactly who they are and you don't see it. Because you're not looking. Because you don't want to."
I stare at him.
"The wife," he continues. "She probably sees things. Small things. But she explains them away because the alternative is too hard. That's scarier than a guy who's good at hiding. A guy who doesn't have to hide because no one's really paying attention."
I don't say anything. I can't.
He shrugs, like he didn't just crack open the entire foundation of my book. "Just a thought. I'll be back in an hour with the part."
The door closes behind him, and I'm left standing in my grandmother's kitchen with wet feet and a head full of ideas I didn't have ten minutes ago.
He comes back in forty-five minutes, not an hour, and he fixes the sink without saying much of anything.
I try to stay out of his way, retreating to the living room with my laptop, but I can't focus. I keep thinking about what he said. The wife sees things but explains them away. The husband doesn't have to hide because no one's paying attention.
It's good. It's really good. And I don't know what to do with the fact that the quiet handyman in my grandmother's cottage just solved a problem I've been wrestling with for months.
I hear the water run, then stop. Cabinets opening and closing. Then footsteps, and Travis appears in the doorway of the living room, wiping his hands on a rag.
"All done," he says. "Shouldn't give you any more trouble."
"What do I owe you?"
"Nothing."
"Travis—"
"The part was eighteen dollars. Your grandmother fed me about a thousand dollars worth of pie over the past six months. We're even."
I want to argue, but the look on his face tells me it won't get me anywhere. He's already decided, and he's not the type to change his mind once it's made up.
"Thank you," I say instead. "For fixing it. And for... the other thing. The advice about the book."
He nods, tucking the rag into his back pocket. His eyes drift to the stack of boxes by the fireplace, then back to me.
"You need help unpacking those?"
"No, I—" I stop. Look at the boxes. Look at him. "Actually, yeah. Maybe. If you have time."
"I have time."
He says it simply, like it's nothing. And maybe it is, to him. Maybe helping is just what he does, the way some people make small talk or send thank-you cards. But it doesn't feel like nothing to me.
We spend the next two hours unpacking. He doesn't talk much, which I'm starting to realize is just how he is, but it's not an uncomfortable silence.
He lifts the heavy boxes without being asked, breaks them down flat when they're empty, stacks them by the back door to take out to the recycling.
I tell him where things go and he puts them there, no questions, no suggestions, no mansplaining about better organizational systems.
At some point I put on music—a playlist I used to listen to in my apartment, Motown and old soul, Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin. He doesn't comment on it, but I catch him nodding along to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" while he's shelving books, and something about that makes me smile.
By the time we're done, the living room looks like a place where someone actually lives.
My books are on the shelves next to my grandmother's.
My throw blanket is draped over the back of the couch.
The photo of my parents from their wedding day is on the mantel, next to the ceramic cat and the snow globe from Niagara Falls.
"Better," Travis says, surveying the room.
"Much better." I'm standing next to him, close enough to smell sawdust and something clean, like soap. "Thank you. Again."
"You keep saying that."
"Because you keep doing things worth thanking you for."
He looks down at me, and for a second there’s a little spark of heat. Then he steps back, breaking whatever it was, and shoves his hands in his pockets.
"I should go," he says. "Let you get back to work."
"Right. The book. Which I'm definitely going to make progress on now."
The corner of his mouth twitches. It's not quite a smile, but it's close, and I feel a small thrill of victory at having caused it.
"Good luck," he says.
"Thanks."
He heads for the back door, and I watch him go—the broad shoulders, the easy way he moves, the way his hair curls at the back of his neck. I watch until he's out the door and crossing the yard toward the cottage, and then I make myself look away.
This is not what I came here for. I came here to write a book and figure out my life, not to develop a crush on the mysterious tenant my grandmother forgot to mention.
I don't have time for this. I don't have the emotional bandwidth.
I have a thriller to finish and a career to rebuild and absolutely no business noticing the way Travis Howe looks in a gray t-shirt.
I sit down at my laptop and open my document.
The cursor blinks at me.
I think about the wife who sees things but doesn't want to look too closely. I think about what it means to hide in plain sight.
I start typing.