The Widow’s Estate

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The other guests left at a little after eleven. Laura asked Cal if he would like a nightcap. He asked, tentatively, if there might be any cold beer. On her way to the kitchen she collected some of the dirty ash trays and glasses. When she brought the beer to him, he was bending over the fireplace poking the fragments of birch log into the bed of embers. The autumn wind sighed across the eaves.

Calvin Burch straightened up and put the fire tongs in the rack. “Compulsive fire-prodder,” he said with a slightly apologetic tone as he took the beer from her. He was a tall, thin man who moved abruptly and, quite often, rather awkwardly.

“So put another log on, for talking,” she said. She turned the lights out at the far end of the living room and came back to sit at the end of the couch. The new log burst into flame quickly, the silver bark crack ling. He sat beside her and they looked at the flames.

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