Court Papers in the Locked Drawer of a Community Doctor
We spent the next two hours carrying the boxes into the cabin kitchen, our movements synchronized and quiet. The cabin kitchen was small, with an old porcelain sink that drained into a dry well behind the woodpile and a three-burner gas stove that had to be lit with a match. We lined the shelves with the green-bound volumes of Frost, Eliot, and Tennyson that I had kept in my schoolroom for thirty years.
Emma took a damp cloth and began to wipe the dust from the windowpanes, her strokes steady and deliberate. Through the clean glass, we could see the gravel path leading down to the dock, where the wild blueberry bushes had grown thick over the path during the summer of my neglect.
“We should clear those bushes before the snow comes,” Ben said, pointing through the window. “They will catch the drifts and block the path entirely.”
“Marcus is coming this afternoon to help with that,” I said, setting a stack of old folders into the desk drawer. “He has the heavy brush cutters.”
Emma stopped wiping the window and looked back at me. “Is he still going to take the class at the library?”
