The Reunion by Amy Silver

sense of regret so powerful it brought a lump to his throat. He had to turn away.
    On the other side of the kitchen counter was a table, a square slab of pale ash, solid as a butcher’s block. He stared at it, took a step forward, traced his fingers along its smooth surface. He could feel Jen’s eyes on him. He turned back to her and they both smiled.
    ‘Hello, big brother,’ she said.
    ‘Hey, little sister.’
    Jen wiped her hands on her apron and came over to him, wrapping her arms around him. They stood there, holding each other, for a long time. The brother/sister thing started at university, a silly joke, their way of mocking Conor’s briefly held fear that his best friend and his girlfriend had become a little too close.
    She let him go.
    ‘You want coffee?’ she asked. ‘Eggs, sausages?’
    ‘Yes to all.’
    ‘Good. Still take your coffee black?’
    ‘Actually, I’m embarrassed to say that I’m more a herbal tea than a coffee person these days, but I’ll take it as it comes.’
    She laughed. ‘Herbal tea? Good Lord, what has she done to you?’ Then he laughed too, but the silence that followed was awkward, the unnamed ‘she’ hanging in the air.
    Jen placed the coffee on a coaster in front of him. He took a sip; it was strong and bitter, it sent a prickle over his skin. It tasted wonderful, like cigarettes and cheap red wine; it tasted of youth. He slipped his hand underneath the table, ran his finger along the ridges underneath, crisp carved lettering. He traced the grooves with his forefinger, spelling out a name. Jennifer. This was her spot.
    ‘What will you do,’ he asked, looking up at Jen, ‘with this? With all the furniture? When you sell?’
    ‘Depends on who I sell it to, I suppose. It’s most likely going to be a holiday home so I imagine they’ll want to keep quite a bit of it. The armchairs and the sofa are probably ready for a skip, though.’ She either didn’t realise what he was asking or was purposefully ignoring it.
    ‘Isn’t it hard,’ he asked, gentle still, tentative, moving around the subject, ‘to think of selling the place?’
    ‘It’s harder to live here.’ She stopped moving for a moment, put down her kitchen utensils, wiped her hands, the expression on her face intense. ‘I think, with time, I would grow to love it again. I think I would. But there are circumstances,’ she said mysteriously, ‘which prevent me from staying here long enough to find out.’
    Andrew imagined for a moment something sinister, a
Jean de Florette
situation, someone attempting to drive away the pesky English interloper.
    ‘And I’m afraid. I feel afraid when I’m here.’
    It was something sinister, he was sure of it.
    ‘Oh, don’t look like that!’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’s nothing terrible. It’s just lonely up here. It’s creepy at night, when you’re all by yourself – everything creaks and the wind howls, and it’s just so isolated. I lie in bed thinking about how I might be chopped to bits with an axe and no one would hear me scream.’ She laughed again and he did too; it was impossible not to, her laugh was like music. ‘I think if I stayed here I’d end up turning into Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
, seeing creepy children everywhere.’
    ‘That was his son.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘His son saw the creepy twins. He went nuts and tried to kill everyone. And wrote what can only be described as a very dull book.’
    ‘Oh, yes. All work and no play…’ Jen selected the largest and most lethal-looking of the knives in the rack on the counter and brandished it at him. ‘Now you know my real intention behind inviting you here…’
    There was a small sound from around the corner, the clearing of a throat. Jen immediately put down the knife and stopped giggling. Andrew leaned to one side to get a look: Natalie was standing there, suitcase beside her, looking less than amused.
    ‘Oh, hello darling,’ he said. ‘Come and have a cup of coffee.’ She