Summers at Blue Lake

by Jill Althouse-Wood

  I almost laughed with relief. I was so afraid that Travis would never be able to overcome this knowledge that I never considered how I felt.

  “No, Travis, I don’t care. Anja’s name is on my mother’s birth certificate. Nobody would have to ever know, and it wouldn’t keep us from ever—” I stopped suddenly.

  “From ever what? Getting married? Is that what you were going to say?”

  “I was going to say, ‘continuing our relationship.’”

  As soon as I said it, I saw Travis’s look of rejection. I amended my own words. “I’m not saying that marriage isn’t part of that continuation. If this thing with Lena doesn’t bother you, then anything is possible.”

  “Lena brought us together,” he said.

  “And, if you remember correctly, she had a hand in keeping us apart.”

  “We’re not apart now, are we?”

  “No.”

  “Is it really over with you and Bryce?” This is the question he’d wanted to ask me all along.

  “Yes,” I said and saw Travis’s relief, as it transformed his features. “I talked to him this morning. We are both moving on with our lives.”

  “And moving on… that is something we’ll do together?”

  “Yes, Travis.”

  “Good,” he said.

  I had hoped he would kiss me, but he didn’t. Instead, Travis fumbled at his side. “We should mark this occasion. Hold out your hand.”

  Travis placed an object in my cupped hand, and I pulled it to me to discover a rock he had collected from Lena’s grave. It was ordinary sandstone, a splinter of the kind of rock used to build the farmhouse. This particular stone was about the size of my palm, rough and tan—quite unremarkable. I laughed at Travis’s gesture, but I understood. The piece of sandstone wasn’t something I could wear like a diamond, but rather it was something tangible I could grip, to hold on to this place of endings and beginnings.

  This is my inheritance.

  “Do you like it?” Travis asked, smiling

  “I’ll keep it forever.”

  I shivered again, either from the cold or the anticipation, I didn’t know.

  “I think we’re finished here,” I said, rubbing my arms.

  Travis stood and offered me his hands. I put the rock in the breast pocket of my shirt and grabbed Travis’s wrists. As he pulled me up and into his embrace, I couldn’t help thinking: if Nonna had written her letter in order to bring about a healing, she had, in that moment, realized her purpose.