North by Brad Kessler

Author:Brad Kessler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2021-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

19

Christopher stomped on the Guest House steps in the rain. It was early evening now and he was bringing supper to Sahro. He folded his umbrella. Before he could knock, the young woman opened the door. She stood in the threshold in a black down coat and clean canary headscarf. Her face looked freshly scrubbed and alert.

“Good evening,” she said.

“You’re feeling better?” he asked.

“Mashallah.” She nodded. “Much better.”

Christopher held up the basket.

“May I?”

“Please.” She opened the door wider. “Fadlan. Come inside.”

The orange lamp glowed in the front room but the Guest House felt chilly and smelled of smoke. While Christopher removed his boots, Sahro gestured toward the woodstove and said she’d been trying to start a fire.

“It does not like the rain,” she said.

“No.” Christopher nodded; the low pressure made it difficult and the old stove was fussy to light. He’d help her in a second, he said but asked if it was okay if he went into the bedroom first to get something there. She gave him a puzzled look and shrugged.

“Of course,” she said.

Christopher left the basket by the door and padded down the hall and entered Father Edward’s old bedroom. He hadn’t been there in months. He tried to ignore the woman’s things—clothing folded neatly on a chair, the unmade bed, a blue knapsack—and went straight to the closet. He pulled open the door, and the smell struck him first. Aqua Velva. Edward’s odor still on his shirts and trousers, his tunic and scapular, his winter habit (he’d been buried in his summer one). His sweaters hung on hangers in a row, untouched since his death. Christopher gathered the clothes in two arms, lifted them from the rack, and closed the closet door with a foot.

In the front room the young woman knelt by the open stove door, fanning a new smoky fire. Christopher draped the pile of clothes over the back of an armchair.

“I noticed you were cold,” he said, wiping his hands. “All these clothes are for the taking.” He gestured to the pile on the chair. “If you need anything to keep warm . . . They’re all going to be given away.”

The woman looked up from the stove and said nothing but kept fanning the flame with a folded piece of newsprint. Christopher arranged the clothes on the chair.

“May I ask,” the woman said, “whose house this is?”

Christopher said it was the previous abbot’s house, the abbot before him.

He nodded to the armchair.

“These were his,” he said.

“His clothing?” Sahro asked.

“Yes.” Christopher nodded. “He died.”

“Allah yerhamo,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

She stood from the stove and walked toward the chair.

“Please.” Christopher gestured. “Take anything.”

“They are very nice things,” Sahro observed.

“Yes,” Christopher nodded. “Old but nice.”

“How long,” she asked, “he die?”

“Last fall,” Christopher said. “Six months ago.”

The woman made no reply. Christopher walked to the stove. She’d left the door open, the flame guttering. How many times had he tended the same stove while Edward sat in the armchair with a book?

He knelt there now,

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