Men Who Walk Blind

An infection of the lungs, something that steals the breath and fills the chest with liquid. He was a lumberjack, a logger, and the danger made the money good but kept him away so long Mabel feels as though they were never related at all.

Until she begins to see him around the house. His skin is wan, the darkness under his eyes sickly. When he coughs his cheeks almost have color again, but his breathing goes raspy and the pallor returns.

He doesn't cook. He doesn't wash the laundry. He doesn't read. He doesn't have his coffee at the kitchen table the way he once did.

But he always stands by the butcher block, looking at that door that her mother had said was nothing.

-

After growing up alone in her isolated family home, Mabel has to come to terms with the unexpected deaths of her parents.

But she's never really been alone. There is her caretaker, the servants, her brother...

and what's left of her father's body locked in the basement.