My Fiancé Livestreamed My Breakdown at My Mother's Funeral

I woke up to the soft crackle of a fire.

For a few seconds, I didn't know where I was. Then I smelled pine smoke and saw the low wood ceiling of the guesthouse, and yesterday came back in pieces: the ice, the water, the orange ring, the brass key.

Someone had come in while I slept. Not far, just to the hearth. I checked the deadbolt and saw I hadn't turned it before I fell asleep. The fire had been fed with fresh pine logs, and on the nightstand sat a folded stack of cotton towels, a mug of tea with the bag still steeping, and a note in neat block letters.

*Clinic on Birch St. Opens at 9. Ask for Dr. Amari if your hands still hurt. —N*

I held the note longer than I needed to.

The year Mom was sick, Brandon used to sigh when I cried in the car. *Can you pull it together before we go in?* he'd say outside some client dinner. *These people don't need to see that.* I learned to fix my mascara in the visor mirror in under a minute.

Through the window, I saw Noah in the yard. The storm had torn a plank loose from the walkway, and he'd rolled up beside it. He angled his chair, locked the brakes with two quick clicks, and pulled a hammer and a box of nails from the canvas tool bag hooked to the side. He worked like he'd done it a thousand times.

I put on my coat and went out.

"I can hold the board," I offered.

He glanced up. "Did you eat breakfast?"

Not *are you okay*. Not *what happened last night*.

"Not yet."

"Then the board can wait." He set down the hammer. "You don't have to pretend you're fine here."

I laughed, but it came out thin. "I don't even remember what fine feels like."

He nodded like that was a reasonable answer and went back to his nail.

---

The café on Main Street was called Mabel's, and the menu was handwritten in chalk above the counter, with *pie of the day* crossed out and rewritten twice. The owner, a gray-haired woman in a flannel shirt, was glaring at a poster taped to the register.

*LAKE CRANE HOLLOW WINTER CHARITY MARKET,* it read, in four different fonts. One of them was Comic Sans. The sign-up sheet beside it had three names and a coffee ring.

"Ignore that," Mabel said when she caught me looking. "My nephew made it. The market's in two weeks, and I've got no vendors and a flyer that looks like a ransom note."

I should have just ordered my muffin. Instead, I heard myself say, "I could redo it. And set up an online sign-up form, so people don't have to come in. If you'd pay me something. Whatever's fair."

She squinted at me. "You do this for a living?"

"I used to."

She slid a laptop across the counter. "Show me."

It took me an hour and two refills. I cleaned up the layout, picked one warm serif font, pulled the red boathouse from a stock photo of the lake, and built a simple form with vendor spots and a deadline.

Mabel leaned over my shoulder and went quiet.

"You did all this in an hour?"

"It's what I do." I stared at the screen. "I'd forgotten I was good at it."

She went into the back and came out with a checkbook. She wrote it right there on the counter and tore it off. *Two hundred dollars.*

It wasn't much. I held it like it weighed a pound.

Brandon used to tell people at parties that I wrote pretty sentences for companies. *She makes things sound nice,* he'd say, and squeeze my shoulder, and everyone would laugh.

On the way back, I stopped at the drugstore and bought a pack of clear photo sleeves. That night, I slid Mom's water-stained picture into one and propped it against the lamp. Then I opened my laptop and started a file of my own. I didn't know what it was yet. I just wanted to make something.

---

Near sunset, Noah's main house glowed orange across the lake. He'd asked if I could help shelve a box of books by the window, the ones too high for him to reach easily.

I carried them up a few at a time. His shelves were solid oak, packed with field guides and battered paperbacks. When I lifted an old atlas, a photo slid out and landed face-up on my boot.

Noah, maybe three years younger, standing in front of a snowy peak. Goggles pushed up on his head. He was grinning, wide and careless, like nothing had ever gone wrong in his life.

I didn't ask. I tucked it back inside the atlas and put it on the shelf.

"That was before the accident," he said from behind me.

I turned. He was holding two mugs of hot cider, steam curling up.

"You don't have to tell me."

"I know." He handed me a mug. "That's why I did."

I looked at the box of books, then at him. "Do you mind me doing this? Getting things for you?"

"If I need help, I'll ask."

"You can ask me for help, Noah."

"And you can tell me no, Erin." He said it gently. "That's how this works."

I set the cider down. Something in my chest loosened that I hadn't realized was clenched.

"Everyone always decided for me," I said. "What was good for me. What I should feel. When I was allowed to be upset."

He looked up. His eyes moved, briefly, to the pale band of skin on my left hand where my ring used to be.

"Does that include your fiancé?" he asked quietly.

I didn't correct him. I didn't answer at all.

Instead, I sat down on the window seat beside his chair, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, and the lake outside held the orange lights like scattered coins.

"My mom spent summers here when she was nineteen," I said. "She snuck out to swim at midnight and got caught by the dockmaster, and she told him she was training for the Olympics."

Noah smiled. A small one, but real. "Did he buy it?"

"He gave her a towel and told her to swim faster next time."

---

Two nights later, I finished the market page and sent Mabel the link. She replied with seven exclamation points.

Noah had made dinner, and I'd made pie. Not as good as Mom's, but close. I'd used her trick of grating cold butter and a pinch of cardamom. A candle burned between us on the kitchen table.

"She made this every winter," I said. "First snow, no matter what. Even when she was on her feet all day teaching. One year it snowed in October and she made three."

"Three pies?"

"She said the snow didn't know it was early." I pushed a crumb around my plate. "Her last birthday, she asked for one. She couldn't really eat by then. She just wanted to smell it. I baked it at the hospital in this tiny staff kitchen, and the nurse—"

My voice stopped.

Noah didn't fill the silence. He slid a napkin across the table toward me and went back to cutting his chicken, like I had all the time in the world.

I pressed the napkin under my eyes. It was the first time in a year someone had let me cry without asking me to hurry.

Then my phone buzzed against the table.

A photo. From Brandon.

The wooden sign at the edge of town, the one I'd passed in the rain. *Welcome to Crane Hollow Lake.* The picture was taken from a car window. It was dated today.

Under it, a text.

*I know where you are, Erin.*

Then another.

*You can't hide from me forever.*

The candle flickered. Noah set down his fork. "Erin?"

Years ago, I'd shown Brandon Mom's old postcard on our fridge. *Greetings from Crane Hollow Lake!* He'd barely looked up from his phone. *Cute,* he'd said.

He'd remembered.

I looked out at the black window, at the dark water I couldn't see. He hadn't driven all this way to say he was sorry.

He was coming for the thing he refused to lose.