The summer house is my mother's, and for two weeks it is mine: the reed roof, the sandy path to the Baltic, the fridge with nothing in it but white wine and a lemon. I am Luise, twenty-four, and I have taken this fortnight to finish my thesis and to be, for once, entirely alone.
On the third evening a car pulls into the drive that I know by the sound of its engine.
We stand there. He's fifty-four, I'm twenty-four, and the Baltic Sea roars behind the house like something listening. He's watched me from family gatherings for six years, and I've watched him, and we've both always looked away first.
“I thought the house was empty,” he says.
“It isn't.”
“No.” He doesn't leave. He doesn't come in either. The August heat sits between us on the step, and the cicadas are the only ones talking. He is forty-nine, greying at the temples, and I have spent ten years being careful not to look at him too long across a dinner table. Here there is no table.
I make room in the doorway. It is a small movement. He notices it, and takes it, and his bag brushes my hip as he passes into the cool of the hall.
