Anne Korkeakivi - An Unexpected Guest

She flipped off the light switch. She was lucky to have known so much love in her life. To think that she’d always considered it a burden.

She trod the length of the hallway and stopped at Jamie’s room. He was asleep still, cradled in the afghan she’d wrapped around him. Tomorrow, on their way to Barrow, she would begin to tell him about the mistakes people made, and the prices that had to be paid for them. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep him from making his own. But at least she could try to keep him from the one he was in the middle of making and give him some thoughts to hold close for the future.

Edward was stretched out across their bed, awake, his eyes points of intelligence in the dark. He would go to England in the morning to face Barrow with Jamie if she asked, but she would not. There would be time enough for him to talk to Jamie, for him and her to talk together. Everyone was a compilation of right and wrong steps, like the steps that had brought her and Edward to the same stretch of road together. The point was that they kept on walking.

“I’m back,” she said.

She dropped her sweater on her vanity, next to the scarf she’d laid there so many hours earlier, and draped her skirt and stockings over it. She slipped into bed and felt against her bare arms the coolness of the sheets where her husband hadn’t been lying. He shifted his weight, making room for her.

“Clare,” he said, reaching out for her.

Yes, she said to herself. It’s Clare here.

Thank you to my mother, MaryAnn, and my late father, William, and to my sisters, Alice and Caroline.

Thank you to the peerless Gail Hochman, and everyone at Brandt & Hochman.

Thank you to Judy Clain, Michael Pietsch, Nathan Rostron, and the whole wonderful team at Little, Brown.

Thank you to Alice Mattison and C. Michael Curtis.

Thank you to Mina Samuels, Eva Mekler, Laurel Zuckerman, Anita Chaudhuri, Ronna Wineberg, Louise Farmer Smith, Susan Malus, and Melanie McDonald.

Thank you to the many others who also offered valued pieces of advice, assistance, and information, including but not limited to Ian Whitehead, Jocelyn Ferguson, Sandee Roston, Tom Kennedy, Julie Metz, Nancy Woodhouse, Niamh Casey, Stef Pixner, Corinne McGeorge, and Christina Haag. Thank you, Jörg Brockmann.

I am indebted to Drue Heinz and the International Retreat for Writers at Hawthornden Castle, within whose ancient stone walls in Scotland I was fortunate enough to undertake a last revision.

Last but never least, thank you to Antti, Susanna, and Laura.

Anne Korkeakivi was born in New York City and currently lives in Geneva, Switzerland, where her husband, a human-rights lawyer, is with the United Nations. They have two daughters. Her short stories have been published by The Yale Review, The Atlantic, The Bellevue Literary Review, and other magazines, and she is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her nonfiction has run in numerous periodicals in the United States and Britain, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times (London), Gourmet, Ms., and Travel & Leisure. She has also lived, among other places, in France and Finland.