Dear Mr. Hunter,
We regret to inform you that Helen Louise Hunter passed away on October 8th following a brief illness. Per her instructions, funeral services were held privately for immediate family only.
As you were not listed among her emergency contacts, we were unable to notify you prior to the service. We are sending this notification to fulfill our legal obligations regarding next of kin.
Sincerely, James Morrison, Esq.
Helen Louise Hunter. Derek's mother. My aunt, though she'd made it clear years ago that she no longer acknowledged the relationship.
The paper slipped from my fingers, drifting like a white leaf to the floor. October 8th. Five days ago. She'd been dead for five days, and I'd been here fixing generators and teaching Eric how to splice rope while her body went into the ground surrounded by people who pretended I didn't exist.
Memories flooded back.
Derek in the hospital room next to mine, machines breathing for him while I lay there with a shattered knee and lungs that worked fine. The rush of doctors and nurses down the hall when his monitor flatlined.
Aunt Helen in the hallway afterward, her face transformed by grief into something sharp enough to cut. The slap that left mycheek stinging for hours—not because she'd hit me hard, but because she'd meant it with every fiber of her being.
I pressed my forehead against the cool surface of the table, breathing in the scent of old wood and coffee grounds and salt air that usually anchored me.
Aunt Helen was dead. The woman who'd baked me birthday cakes until I was fifteen and taught me to drive a stick shift in her ancient Buick. She called me her second son until the night her first son died because he'd been too drunk to navigate a curve.
She was dead, and I'd never get the chance to build a new bridge.
I bent to retrieve the letter from where it had fallen, fingers clumsy against the smooth paper. The words hadn't changed—she was still dead, the funeral still over, and my exile still complete.
The wood stove squatted in the corner of the living room like a patient animal, its firebox dark and cold despite the October chill that had begun creeping through the cottage walls. I opened the iron door, revealing the nest of kindling and newspaper I'd laid that morning but never lit. The letter fit perfectly among the tinder, white paper stark against brown twigs.
I found the matchbox on the mantel, fingers tracing its rough edges. One strike and Aunt Helen's death would become smoke and ash, another piece of my past reduced to carbon.
For some reason, I couldn't light the match. I closed the stove door and turned away.
"Wes?" Eric's voice drifted from the hallway, followed by the soft pad of sock feet against worn floorboards. "Everything okay? I heard you come in."
He appeared in the kitchen doorway, hair still mussed from whatever afternoon project had claimed his attention. He'd tucked his laptop under one arm, and he wore a look of gentle concern.
"I'm fine." The words came out flat, mechanical, and stripped of anything inviting questions or comfort.
Eric tilted his head. "You sure? You look—"
"Said I'm fine." I moved toward the hallway, brushing past him to the refuge of my bedroom.
"Wes—"
"Need to lie down. Knee's acting up."
It wasn't entirely a lie—my knee always ached when the barometric pressure went down, and there was a dip caused by a front moving in from the northwest. The real ache was deeper, in places I couldn't fix with ibuprofen and a heating pad.
Eric didn't follow me down the hallway. I heard him moving around the kitchen. He was probably brewing fresh coffee or grabbing a late-morning snack.
My bedroom door closed behind me with a click that sounded too final, like a deadbolt sliding into place. I sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped between my knees, and stared at the pattern of wood grain in the floor planks.
He doesn't need this.
Eric had come to study resilience, not watch a grown man crumble because a letter arrived bearing news that should have mattered less after more than a decade of silence.
He doesn't need me.
That truth settled deeper, past the immediate pain of Aunt Helen's death and into the foundational grief that anchored me on Ironhook. Eric was young, brilliant, and full of the kind of hope that made him see possibility where others saw only endings. He deserved someone who could match that energy.
