Author: Lynne Curry

I didn’t get the house. Not the Lexus, the lake lot, the gilded dental practice or the damn espresso machine I bought him the year he started molar sculpting.
I got a one-room cabin. Ninety miles south of Anchorage. No plumbing. A stove that belches smoke. A roof that drips snowmelt onto my bed.
Daniel handed it over like a favor. Like a pat on the head for staying quiet. Like I wouldn’t notice he kept everything else. He tossed the keys across the lawyer’s desk with that old glint—the one that used to mean sex, then morphed into you’re nothing.
I had designed every inch of his house on the Hill—hand-picked the walnut, matched the stone to the mountains’ stormy gray, laid cables for smart lights he never figured out how to dim. The house wore my fingerprints; the deed never wore my name.
So now it’s me and this cabin. A stove that burps smoke. The last time I looked in the mirror, I counted more regrets than wrinkles. I watch snow slough off the peaks and wonder if they feel the weight before they let go.
But I’m not here to sulk. I’m here to look. Because his father—Anton Volkov—had secrets. A Soviet-born Alaskan dentist with burner phones and a habit of going off-grid.

Daniel had despised him—and this cabin. Said it stank of mildew and fish guts. But Anton visited it regularly. Even after the stroke, he had someone bring him down to check the locks and the propane tanks.
And Anton had hated Daniel but liked me.
The first night here, I didn’t sleep. Just sat on the floor with a box of Franzia, listening to snowmelt plink through the rafters.
Around midnight, I grabbed a chisel from the drawer and started prying up warped floorboards looking for what brought Anton here so often.
I’d about given up when I lifted the third plank from the wall under the bed. Sawdust, mice skeletons and a rusted metal box, shallow-buried in and grit. Corroded hinges but an intact padlock.
Inside: Documents. Photos. Deeds. A plastic bag packed with cash bundles, green gone soft with mold. A folder stamped DOJ Evidence.
Anton’s Mine. Wire transfers. Offshore accounts. Receipts in Russian. A scanned passport photo of me. My signature—sort of.
Everything Daniel claimed he didn’t know how to do—he’d done it all. With my forged signature on the shell corp.
I didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Just sat back on my heels and let the rot claw its way up my throat.
Anton had meant to burn Daniel.
He’d left me the matchbook.
At sunrise, I washed my hands in snowmelt and drove to Anchorage.
By sunset, I had a lawyer. By the next week, I had the Feds. By spring, they had him.
Now I have the house on the Hill. The espresso machine. His chair at the dental board.
And I kept the cabin.

Ed. Note: This story was first published by Literary Garage