Finn
I watch Calla pad down the trail toward the Carriage House, camera in hand.
There was never any chance she would leave this alone. My sister cannot—absolutely cannot—resist a mystery. A puzzle. Something she can examine from every angle until it gives up its secrets.
Particularly when that mystery is handsome, half-naked, and speaks with a British accent.
She’s only human.
Cheeto meows at the window.
“You don’t like country living, boy?” I ask him. He squints. His tail swishes.
My phone buzzes. I pull it out of my pocket.
Mack: Your side of the bed is cold.
I smile, and my thumb skims the keyboard.
Me: What about Haley?
I delete it. Re-type it. Send.
Three bubbles.
Mack: Haley who?
Me: The girl you broke up with Jacob for.
She sends a crying laughing emoji, then:
It’s getting hard to keep stories straight.
I answer: I know. I don’t like it.
She answers immediately. If you tell her before I figure out how, I’ll kill you.
I answer: Your sexting could use some work.
Three bubbles appear then disappear.
Finally: If I sext you, you’ll know it.
Then: How’s it going there? I haven’t heard anything from Calla. Is your mom okay?
As I type out an answer, I glance down at the Carriage House to see my sister peering in the windows.
Well, things are weird here. I’m sure Calla will tell you all about it. Mom is fine, but someone washed ashore on our beach tonight.
Mack: A body???
A living person, I answer. Which is actually more unusual around here. Calla is investigating him right now.
Mack: WTH, Price?? You should’ve led with this.
Me: You texted ME, remember? You miss me.
Mack: I said your side of the bed is cold.
Me: That’s your way of saying you miss me.
Three bubbles appear.
Mack: Don’t flatter yourself, Price.
I type, You could come sooner.
My thumb hovers over the arrow. Then I delete the words one by one.
Me: Two weeks is a long time to sleep alone.
Mack: Somehow, I think you’ll survive.
Me: Lonely and coldly, apparently.
She sends me a middle finger, followed by a black heart.
The closest Mack ever comes to tenderness.
I smile as I slip my phone back into my pocket.
Outside, morning bleeds into the sky, turning the black windows gray. Calla has disappeared from the Carriage House window. Presumably, she’s found a better vantage point from which to violate an unconscious man’s privacy.
Cheeto paws at the glass.
“What?” I ask. “You want to help?”
His tail twitches.
A cluster of crows circles above the roof, their bodies little more than black strokes against the brightening sky.
One breaks away from the others and lands on the turret roof.
The light in Mom’s studio is still on.
I glance at the time on my phone. It’s nearly three in the morning.
She could have gone to sleep and woke early.
She could have.
Cheeto gives another impatient meow.
“I’m going.”
He watches me leave without offering to come along. Typical. Concern without inconvenience.
The house is quiet as I make my way to the third floor.
Mom claimed the room as her studio years ago. Dad installed shelving for her paints and brushes, and Calla and I spent an entire summer scraping ancient wallpaper from the curved walls. Beneath it, we found three more layers—roses, stripes, and tiny blue birds—each one uglier than the last.
Mom chose white.
She said her paintings would be the color.
The studio door is cracked open. Soft music drifts through it, something classical and melancholy. I stand outside for a moment, listening.
The quiet scrape of a brush against canvas.
The clink of glass as she dips it into a jar.
A soft hum beneath the music.
All normal.
“You can come in, Finn,” Mom says. “You’ve never been as quiet as you think you are.”
I push the door open.
She sits at an easel near the windows, still wearing the long gray sweater she had on when we arrived.
Her hair is twisted into a loose knot, secured with a paintbrush. Several strands have escaped around her face.
The room smells of linseed oil, oil paints, and turpentine.
“You’re still awake,” I say.
“So are you.”
“I’m young. It’s expected.”
I cross the room and look at the canvas.
Foxglove rises from a dark green background, its pale blossoms delicately veined with purple. Only half the flowers are finished. The rest exist in faint charcoal outlines, waiting to become something.
“Poisonous,” I say.
“Medicinal.”
“Depending on the dose.”
“Everything depends on the dose.”
She turns back to the canvas and adds a thin line of shadow beneath one of the blossoms.
Her hand is steady. Her eyes are clear. The painting makes sense. I feel my shoulders loosen.
“I’m fine, darling,” she says.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You never do. You watch.”
I lean against the worktable, folding my arms. “You should get some sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I will.”
She studies me for a moment, in that quiet way mothers do when they’re deciding which lie to challenge.
“And Calla?” she asks.
“Currently spying on the man in the Carriage House.”
Mom smiles and returns to the foxglove. “Then he’ll be thoroughly documented.”
“He might wake up to find she’s assembled a full psychological profile and a gallery exhibit.”
I glance through the curved window. From here, the Carriage House is visible beyond the trees, its windows glowing faintly in the gloom. A shadow moves past one of them.
Calla, probably.
Above us, the crow on the roof scratches across the slate.
Then a voice speaks close to my ear.
He shouldn’t be here.
I straighten.
Mom continues painting.
“Did you say something?”
Her brush pauses. “No.”
I look behind me. The studio is empty except for the two of us.
“You all right?” she asks.
“Fine.”
The answer comes too quickly.
Her eyes remain on me, but I turn back toward the window before she can examine my face too closely.
The Carriage House stands silent below us.
The shadow is gone.
“It’s been a long night,” Mom says gently.
“Yeah.”
That’s all it is. Exhaustion. The house settling around us. A thought arriving in a voice that doesn’t feel like mine.
On the roof, the crow taps once against the slate.
Then again.
I reach for the window latch and lock it.
As I do, movement below catches my eye.
A shadow slips between the trees at the edge of the lawn.
Calla.
She’s probably finished spying through the Carriage House windows and moved on to trespassing somewhere else.
But the figure isn’t coming toward the house.
It’s moving in the opposite direction, toward the cemetery.
“Is Calla still outside?” Mom asks.
I keep my eyes on the trees. “Apparently.”
The shadow passes through a break in the branches, there and gone too quickly for me to make out anything more than its height. It almost seems too tall to be Calla.
Or maybe that’s the angle.
Surely it’s not the stranger.
“You should both get some sleep,” Mom says.
“That’s the plan.”
She looks pointedly at the clock on the wall. It’s just after three.
“Eventually,” I add.
I kiss the top of her head before she can protest. “Don’t stay up all night.”
“I’ll make you a deal.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“You were going to tell me you’d go to bed if I did.”
She smiles. “You always were annoyingly clever.”
I leave her to the foxglove and make my way downstairs.
Cheeto is no longer at the window. He has curled into a ball on the back of the sofa, apparently having adapted to country living in the time it took me to climb the stairs.
“Comfortable?" I ask wryly.
One orange ear flicks in my direction.
I take a flashlight from the drawer beside the back door and pull on my jacket.
The rain has stopped, but the night is still wet. Water drips from the eaves and glistens along the flagstone path. The air smells like home: salt, earth, minerals, and the sharp green bite of the forest after a storm.
I sweep the flashlight across the lawn.
Nothing moves.
The Carriage House windows glow through the trees. Calla could still be over there, but the figure I saw was headed toward the cemetery.
Maybe the stranger woke up.
Maybe he followed her outside.
The beam trembles slightly against the trees.
I tighten my grip on the flashlight.
A sudden explosion of wings tears through the silence.
I flinch as crows burst from the branches above me, their bodies black against a blacker sky. They circle over the house in a churning mass before scattering toward the forest.
Crows aren’t nocturnal. At this hour, they should be roosting.
Something woke them.
One passes low enough that I hear the heavy beat of its wings.
I watch until the last one disappears beyond the roofline.
Then I turn toward the cemetery.
The path begins behind the funeral home and winds between the headstones. Calla and I used to race through here when we were children, leaping over graves until Dad caught us and delivered a lecture about respect for the dead.
I pass the older graves first, their names softened by rain and sun and time. Some of the stones lean toward one another as though sharing secrets.
My flashlight catches movement near the far wall.
A figure slips behind a stone angel.
“Calla?”
No answer.
I quicken my pace.
By the time I reach the angel, there’s no one there. Only the statue with its bowed head and rain streaming down its face like tears.
Beyond it, the chapel door stands open.
Just a few inches.
A thin wedge of candlelight spills across the path.
I stop.
The chapel is always unlocked during the day. People come to sit, pray, or light candles. But Dad closes it every night. He checks the door himself.
“Calla?” I call again.
Silence.
I take a breath, then cross the last few yards and push the door open.
The chapel is small with a few rows of pews facing a simple stone altar. The walls are rough and pale, interrupted by narrow stained-glass windows that turn the darkness outside into fractured shades of blue.
Two candles burn beside the altar.
Mom began lighting them when Calla and I were children. One for each of us. She replaces them before they burn out, transferring the flame from the old wick to the new so the light never disappears entirely.
The doctors say it might be OCD, because she gets very distressed if one ever goes out, as though she believes that if the light goes out, we’ll burn out, too.
I sweep the flashlight across the pews.
Empty.
I check behind the altar, then the tiny alcove where the extra candles are stored.
No Calla.
No stranger.
No one.
The door must not have latched properly. The figure could have been a trick of the trees, a shadow thrown by my own flashlight.
Except I saw it from the turret before I had the flashlight.
I return to the pew nearest the altar and sit.
The silence here is different from the silence in the house. The house is never truly quiet. Pipes knock. Floorboards settle. The ocean pushes against the cliffs beneath it.
The chapel absorbs sound.
Even my breathing feels intrusive.
My phone is heavy in my pocket.
I take it out, though I already know Mack hasn’t sent another message.
Our conversation stares up at me.
Your side of the bed is cold.
Almost a year.
That’s how long this thing between us has been happening. Long enough that thing isn’t an adequate word anymore, although neither of us has suggested a better one.
It didn’t begin as a secret.
The first time, there was nothing to tell. A bad decision between two people.
Then it happened again, and telling Calla would have made it seem important.
By the time it became important, we had waited too long.
It's been a good lesson for me: Secrets rarely begin as lies. Usually, they begin as truths you don’t tell quickly enough.
I imagine telling Calla now.
She would stare at me for several seconds, waiting for the joke. Then she would ask how long.
Not why.
Not what does this mean?
How long.
Because the length of it is the betrayal.
Eleven months of Mack drinking coffee in our kitchen. Eleven months of the three of us going to concerts, watching movies, eating takeout on the living room floor. Eleven months of Mack disappearing into my room after Calla went to sleep, then emerging the next morning with some explanation neither of us had needed to invent because Calla never thought to ask.
My sister believes she knows everything about me.
Until Mack, she did.
I get up and cross to the candles.
The twin flames for Calla and me.
Mom says candles aren’t only for the dead. They can be lit for the living, too. For protection. For hope. For courage.
I take a fresh taper from the box and hold it to my lit candle. The wick catches, the flame small and unsteady at first.
I think of Mack curled beneath her blankets, pretending she doesn’t miss me.
I think of Calla walking unsuspectingly between us.
I place the third candle beside the other two.
“For courage,” I murmur.
Then I stand still and do absolutely nothing courageous.
Behind me, the chapel door creaks.
I turn.
The doorway is empty. Beyond it, the cemetery disappears into darkness.
“Calla?”
No answer.
The candle flames bend sharply toward the open door.
All three of them.
I grab my flashlight from the pew and step outside. The beam cuts across the path, the headstones, the dripping trees.
There is no one there.
When I look back at the altar, the two candles Mom keeps for us are burning steadily again.
The third has gone out.
By the time I reach the house, the rain has started again.
I lock the back door behind me and return the flashlight to the drawer.
Calla is sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open and her camera connected to it by a white cord. Her wet hair is piled on top of her head, and she has changed into an old University of Washington sweatshirt. A mug sits beside her, steam curling from the top.
She glances up. “Where were you?”
“The chapel.”
Her fingers stop over the keyboard.
“Why?”
“Were you there?”
“No.”
The answer comes without hesitation.
I pull the coffee pot from beneath the machine and fill it at the sink.
“Are you sure?”
She looks at me as if I’ve asked whether she’s certain about her own name. “Yes, Finn. I’m sure.”
“I thought I saw you.”
“In the chapel?”
“Going toward it.”
“At three in the morning?”
I set the pot beneath the machine. “You were peering through the windows of an unconscious stranger at three in the morning. Let’s not pretend either of us is making conventional choices tonight.”
“That was investigative.”
“Of course.”
She smiles despite herself. “Did you find whoever it was?”
“No.”
For a moment, I think she’ll keep pushing. Usually, she would. Calla can worry at a loose thread until the entire garment comes apart in her hands.
Tonight, she lets it go.
The coffee maker gurgles to life. Cheeto jumps onto the empty chair beside Calla and peers at her laptop.
“Finally,” she tells him. “Someone willing to help.”
I take the chair across from her. “What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“That seems unlikely. You were gone long enough to perform a minor surgical procedure.”
“I looked around outside first. No wallet, phone, shoes, bag. Nothing caught in the rocks. Nothing on the beach except footprints, and most of those belong to us or the paramedics.”
“And inside?”
“Dad gave him a pair of sweatpants and one of your old shirts.”
“Why mine?”
“It's not like mine will fit him."
She turns the laptop so I can see the screen.
A grid of photographs fills it.
Dare unconscious on the narrow bed. Dare’s hand resting against the blanket. The dark bruising along his ribs. Damp hair falling over his forehead. His face in profile, too pale against the pillow.
Calla has photographed him from every possible angle.
“This is extremely abnormal behavior,” I say.
“I was looking for anything identifying.”
“You photographed his eyelashes. Is there a national eyelash database?”
“They're very long," she says, eyeing the photo.
I click through the images.
She captured the bruises, a faint scar near his temple, and a small mark beneath his jaw. Nothing resembles a medical-alert tattoo or military identification. He’s wearing one silver ring on his middle finger. No watch.
I reach the final photograph.
Dare’s eyes are open.
He isn’t looking toward the window.
He’s looking directly into Calla’s lens.
I sit back.
“He woke up?"
“For a second.”
I enlarge the photograph.
His face is slack with exhaustion, but his eyes are sharply focused, fixed on Calla as though he knew exactly
where she was standing.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. He opened his eyes and looked at me.”
“Did he say anything?”
She reaches for her mug.
The hesitation is small, but I see it.
“Calla.”
“He said ‘you.’”
I look up. “You?”
“Yes.”
“As in, ‘You’re trespassing and taking pictures of me’?”
“As in, ‘you.’ That was the entire conversation.”
“Did he sound surprised?”
“I don’t know.”
“Frightened?”
“I don’t know, Finn."
She says it sharply enough that Cheeto looks at her.
Calla lowers her voice. “He opened his eyes for maybe two seconds. He said one word, then passed out again. I have no idea what he meant.”
I study the photograph.
The man doesn’t seem confused.
But that doesn’t mean anything. Calla captured a fraction of a second. A camera preserves whatever happens in front of it, not necessarily the truth behind it.
Still, something about his expression bothers me.
He shouldn’t be here. The voice is back, and I honestly cannot tell if it's mine. It has to be, doesn't it?
I close the photograph.
“Let’s see if the internet knows him.”
The coffee finishes brewing. I fill two mugs and push one toward Calla, even though she already has tea.
She takes it without comment.
We start with a reverse-image search using the clearest photograph of the man’s face. It produces an actor from a British crime drama, a rugby player from Wales, and a man in Melbourne advertising bespoke suits.
None of them are him.
I crop the image more tightly and try again.
Nothing.
Calla searches missing-person reports while I check local news. We look for boating accidents, distressed vessels, capsized kayaks—anything that might explain how a living man arrived on our beach without possessions, identification, or shoes.
There are no reported accidents nearby. No active search. No nameless British man vanishing from a ship along the Oregon coast.
I glance at Calla’s screen. "Let's expand the search to Washington, Oregon, and northern California. and British Columbia.”
She does.
Still nothing.
“Maybe no one has reported him missing yet,” she says.
“Surely someone should knows he’s gone.”
“Not everyone has someone keeping track of them.”
There’s something in her voice I don’t like.
Sympathy.
She returns to the photographs and zooms in on the faint scar near his temple.
“Maybe he fell from a private boat,” she says. “If everyone else aboard thinks he’s dead, they might not be searching this far south.”
“There would still be a distress call.”
“Unless they didn’t make one.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe everyone’s asleep and they don’t know yet. Or maybe whatever happened wasn’t an accident.”
Outside, the wind drives rain against the windows.
I look toward the dark shape of the Carriage House beyond the trees.
“You have a big imagination."
I search again, changing the crop and sharpening the photograph.
The results refresh.
The same actor. Two different rugby players. A shampoo advertisement.
“This is useless.”
Calla reaches for the coffee I made her. “Did Mom go to bed?”
“She’s painting.”
“Still?”
“She couldn’t sleep.”
Calla nods and returns to her computer.
I watch her for a moment—the crease between her brows, the way she bites the inside of her cheek when
she’s concentrating. I have known every version of this face. Angry, delighted, heartbroken, feverish, drunk.
Trusting.
I could tell her about Mack now.
The words are simple enough.
Mack and I have been sleeping together.
The rest is more difficult.
For almost a year.
I open my mouth.
Three knocks sound at the front door.
Slow.
Evenly spaced.
Calla and I look at each other.
Cheeto lifts his head.
Another knock.
“What time is it?” Calla asks.
“Three forty-seven.”
“Maybe Dad locked himself out.”
“He's upstairs."
The knock comes again.
Cheeto jumps down from the chair and disappears beneath the table.
I stand.
Calla follows me into the foyer, close enough that I can feel her behind my shoulder. The porch light burns through the narrow windows beside the door, but whoever is standing outside is beyond my line of sight.
I unlock the dead bolt.
The voice returns to me.
He shouldn’t be here.
I open the door.
The stranger stands on the porch.
He’s barefoot, wearing black sweatpants and my faded Quid Pro Quo shirt. Rain beads in his dark hair and runs down the hollows of his cheeks. He can’t be much older than we are, but it seems like he’s lived harder, somehow.
His gaze passes over me.
And lands on Calla.
“I remember something,” he says.
His voice is rough, the British accent unmistakable.
Calla steps closer. “What?”
The man doesn’t take his eyes from her.
“You,” he says. “I remember you.”
From the Estate
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