Free The From-Aways by C.J. Hauser Page B

through, without even skipping the bridge. You wouldn’t believe what a new set of strings can do for an old groaning guitar. I hold the last chord down tight, letting it ring out. When I let go my fingers are string-dented.
    “I like that,” Rosie says. She takes my hand and squeezes each fingertip. And just like that, I sketch Rosie into my family portrait. Into the gaping hole I now know better than to save for Carter. See us there, two girls, arms looped strong together.
    Rosie says, “Was that a Carter Marks song? He comes by the Stationhouse every Sunday. He’s an excellent tipper.”

11

    Leah
    H enry sits on the sofa in our living room, which has a low ceiling supported by beams. The thick carpet is a deep green. On the windowsill is a CB radio tuned to one of the lobstermen’s channels. I turn it on and hear, She don’t know I’ve gone buggin’ and if she finds out she’ll have my head . I click the dial off.
    I hear rain pelting the roof. The stone fireplace has a picture of a boat on the mantel and the room is full of armoires and sea captain’s chests and things that belonged to Henry’s parents. I look through them when Henry isn’t home. The desk’s first drawer is full of stray knobs and keys and bolts. Another had recipes in it. Plain index cards rubber-banded in a stack. The recipes were written in pencil, in what could only have been June Lynch’s slanting hand. Recipes for cod bakes. Lobster rolls. Corn casserole. Blueberry slump. Whoopie pie. Strawberry rhubarb pie. There was a red splotch on the last one and I shivered when I saw it. I turned, thinking I might see June there behind me, in flour-dusted jeans with her sleeves rolled up, wanting to show me how to roll out the dough. But there was no one, and I was a little disappointed. I shut the cards in the drawer.
    Most of this house spooks me most of the time, and I love it. Back in the city, when Henry and I talked about moving to Maine, we ran our mouths until it sounded like something we’d talk about forever but never actually do. His stories about Menamon grew and grew in my mind. A place with lobsters so thick in the sea you could barely go swimming, he said, tweaking me all over, a thousand lobster claws pinching. A place where lifelong grudges were held over stolen pie recipes and county fair ribbons. A place where children were tough; they raised animals for 4-H and butchered them too. They worked on boats and in fields and in shops. They learned to build things and to shoot, the value of money and how to behave at a funeral. And they were happy, these children, because no one had allergies or learning disabilities or nannies. No one? I said. Surely some —
    No one, Henry said, his eyes lit up, twinkling.
    He talked about his parents’ house, and we dreamed about living there, but we’d have had to pay the bank a fair amount to get it, and the amount just seemed too much. So we gave up on that idea and I tried to find something on Craigslist. The people of Hancock County, it seemed, did not often use Craigslist. And then, one day, Henry showed up with a stack of photos and a ring of keys, a green ribbon tied around them. These are for you, he said. He was grinning, beaming, prouder than I’d ever seen him. Embarrassed too for being so proud. They were the photos of this house, his parents’ house. The keys, to open its doors. How did you — I said, and Henry just told me he’d worked, saved, found the money to pay off the bank. He’d made it work, he said.
    You are giving me a house? I said. We’re really going? I have never been good at receiving gifts, they make me feel awkward and guilty and shy, and this was such an enormous gift I felt unequal to it. But whatever discomfort I felt at the hugeness of what Henry had done, the wonder of it was greater. Henry was magical. He had swum through seas of lobsters and worked since the womb and never had allergies and he had, not an apartment, but a whole house, and we were