All That's Left to Tell by Daniel Lowe

Author:Daniel Lowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

10

The wind through the flue of the chimney makes the flame flicker, but he has become an expert at lighting these simple fires, and a minute later the slivers of bark along the split wood are popping and crackling, sending shadows against the walls of the room because, after he woke, he’d turned on only the light above the kitchen stove, and he didn’t even need that to navigate the rooms. He closes the door of the already warming wood burner, stands and brushes the bits of bark from his hands, thinks about starting the coffee, but doesn’t want to make more noise that might wake Kathleen, since it’s still an hour before sunrise, and he wants to sit alone for a while with the memory of Claire as a small child that is visiting him more sharply than it has in years.

He had been delighted when he’d learned of Kathleen’s daughter’s pregnancy, and Kathleen had been effervescent, and inclusive, saying, “Ready or not, Marc, you’re gonna be a grandpa.” He had sidestepped the impact of that claim, had still not told Kathleen about Claire, which had never been his intention. But if he did not intend it, then what was the reason for keeping it secret? His sisters, along with the few friends he still had from his marriage to Lynne, showed discretion on the rare occasions where they were in Kathleen’s company, though he was sure they assumed Kathleen knew about his daughter.

The rooms in the house are warming, and he pulls off the blanket he is using and sits back against the chair. In the year he’s been living with Kathleen, he’s grown heavier, surrendering his morning rows across the water last summer and fall so he could lie next to her in the early-morning hours. And for the most part, it’s been too cold to go out and run in the winter months; he’s grateful that it’s March, even if the wind over the ice didn’t feel like spring; there was more daylight now, and by late April he was hoping to see expanses of open water across the lake. He remembers how one spring he took the boat out and navigated the remaining patches of ice, how he’d managed to wedge it between two miniature icebergs, and had to climb out of the boat to free it, his weight on the ice letting the water rise to his knees, and he’d lost his balance and was lucky to tumble back into the boat without risking hypothermia.

Has he stopped missing Claire? He remembers how, at a year and a half, she used to reach for things, a wooden block, a leaf, and turn it in her hand while she gazed. He remembers her wide eyes when she was born. But when he thinks of her now, it is less about memory, less about the recollections of her childhood—he had almost no artifacts from that time, because Lynne had claimed them, no crayon drawings, no school pictures,

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