by Mary McNear
CHAPTER 4
A couple of nights later, in another cabin on Butternut Lake—this one larger, and more cluttered, than Win’s—Sam Boyd sat down at his dining room table and flipped open his laptop. He’d been trying to watch the same YouTube video all night, and every time he started to play it, he’d been interrupted. “It’s about damn time,” he muttered, as the short commercial before the video finished, but in that same moment he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. He pressed “pause” and snapped his laptop shut.
“All right, who’s still up?” he called out, glancing over at the stairs that led up to the cabin’s second floor.
“It’s me,” his son Hunter answered, shuffling into view.
“Lights out was fifteen minutes ago.”
“I know, but . . .” Hunter hesitated, and then edged down a few more stairs.
“This can’t wait until morning?”
Hunter shook his head.
“Okay, let’s hear it,” Sam said, itching to watch the video, but knowing that no self-respecting father would watch it in front of his nine-year-old son. He waited while Hunter came down the rest of the stairs and then sidled up to him at the dining room table. “Now, what’s this about?” Sam asked.
“Um . . .” Hunter scratched a mosquito bite on his arm.
“Stop scratching,” Sam said. Hunter stopped.
“It’s about . . . the Fourth of July.”
Sam sighed. “Is it that time of year already?” he asked. By “that time of year” he meant the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July, during which his sons (Hunter, and Hunter’s twin brother, Tim) began a series of tense negotiations with Sam over how many and what kinds of fireworks they could buy to commemorate a holiday which for them had very little to do with American independence and everything to do with blowing things up.
“Let me see that,” Sam said to Hunter now, noticing for the first time that his son was holding a notepad. Hunter handed it over and Sam studied the page it was open to, marveling at the unaccustomed neatness of his son’s handwriting. Hunter had made two columns. The one on the right listed the names and desired quantities of each firework, and the one on the left listed their prices. At the bottom of the left-hand column was the sum total Hunter and Tim were proposing to spend on this venture.
“Does your math tutor know you can add this well?” Sam asked, looking up from the notepad.
Hunter smiled his familiar half smile.
“Is this all the money you two have saved?” Sam indicated the total in the bottom left corner.
Hunter nodded.
“How many weeks’ allowance is that?”
Hunter considered this. “About six,” he said, finally.
“And you’re sure this is how you want to spend it?”
Hunter nodded again. He wasn’t much of a talker, this kid. Now Sam blew out a long breath, dropped the notepad on the table, and tipped his chair back. Hunter waited, and tried not to scratch his mosquito bite. He and his brother, Tim, were identical twins, but for the quarter sized birthmark on Hunter’s neck. It had been years since Sam had needed it to tell his sons apart, but he knew that it had been a lifeline to all of the teachers, and coaches, and Scout leaders in his sons’ lives. Otherwise, the two boys shared the same reddish-brown hair, the same bright blue eyes, and the same dusting of freckles across their cheeks and the bridges of their noses. Sam reached out now and tried to smooth down Hunter’s hair, but it couldn’t be done. It was a minefield of cowlicks. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to get him and his brother a haircut before they saw their mother next weekend, Sam thought, and while he was at it, he might as well get them some new pajamas, too. The faded Minnesota Twins T-shirt and the tattered gym shorts that served as Hunter’s sleepwear tonight barely covered his gangly arms and legs.
He gave his son’s head a final rub and looked back down at the notepad. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to a firework Hunter had listed as “killer bee fountain.”
“Oh. That looks like a huge swarm of killer bees,” Hunter said, pantomiming a swarm. “Plus, it has one of the loudest whistles of any fountain firework.”
Sam smiled. Hunter had just said more to him than he ordinarily said to his father in a whole week. “Well, we wouldn’t want to miss out on that one,” Sam said. “But remember, I’m going to have to run all of this by your mom, okay?”
“Okay,” Hunter said.
“Now, get to bed.” And then Sam added, in a slightly louder voice, “Both of you.”
“’Night Dad,” Tim called down, from where Sam knew he’d been waiting, just out of sight, at the top of the stairs.
“’Night Tim,” Sam called up. “And Hunter?” he said, before his other son could slink away.
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be a miracle if you and your brother reach adulthood with all ten of your fingers intact.”
“Probably,” Hunter agreed.
“Now, get out of here,” Sam said, good-naturedly, easing his laptop open again.
He clicked on play and then rubbed his eyes. He rested his elbows on the table, and leaned closer, squinting at the screen as the video began.
“Dad?”
He jumped. “Christ,” he mumbled, slamming his computer shut. “Cassie, you have got to stop sneaking up on me like that,” he said, turning to his six-year-old daughter, who was standing beside him.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it if I have quiet feet,” Cassie said, holding her hands behind her back and looking down at her bare feet. “I’ll try to make them louder,” she added, marching them up and down in place.
“No, don’t do that,” Sam said, softening. “If you do that, they’ll be just like your brothers’ feet, and we have enough people clomping around in this house as it is. What’s wrong, sweetie? Are the boys keeping you awake?”
“Not the boys,” she said. She stopped marching, and balanced on one small, pale foot. “The girls.”
“The girls?”
“The girls in my baton twirling class. The mean girls. I told you about them, remember?”
“Riiight,” he said, slowly, leaning back in his chair and trying to remember what the latest drama in baton twirling class had entailed. But it didn’t matter. Cassie usually provided him with a recap anyway.
“I mean, I know Gia and Riley are ten years old,” she said now—pronouncing ten with the special reverence that only a six-year-old could give this age—“but they still act like they’re so much better than me. And not just me. They’re that way with all the six- and seven-year-olds. Do you know what Riley said to Tara today?” she asked, balancing on her other foot now.
“No. What did she say?”
“She said that Tara was so bad, she should stand in back at the recital, even though she knows six- and seven-year-olds have to stand in front. They have to. I mean, they’re so short, if they didn’t stand in front, nobody would see them.”
“That’s true,” Sam said, reasonably, hoping to head this conversation off at the pass. “But I’m sure Riley didn’t mean any harm in saying that.”
“But she did,” Cassie said, not to be dissuaded. “She did mean harm. She always means harm. She told Janelle that her knees are fat. I mean, it’s not even her fault that her knees are fat. She said she got her knees from her mom. And she said that her mom’s knees are not even fat. They’re just dimpled. Which is a much nicer way of saying fat, don’t you think?”
“I do,” Sam said, smiling.
“What were you doing on your computer?” Cassie asked, changing the subject.
“I was going to watch something.”
“A cat video?” Cassie asked, hopefully.
“No, not a cat video. Thanks to you, I think I’ve already seen all five million cat videos online,” Sam said, and he reached out and tugged on one of the slightly messy pigtails he’d forgotten to take out of her hair before he’d tucked her into bed earlier. She looked so much like her mother right now, he thought, as she
stood there, hopping from one foot to the other, the hem of her Cinderella nightgown not quite covering a scab on her right knee. She had her mother’s light brown hair, and bluish-grey eyes, and her fair complexion, too, a complexion that was a lovely mingling of pinks and creams. But if there was no question that she was adorable there was also no question that she was exhausting, and when he said, “Cass, we’ll watch a cat video tomorrow. But what do you say you get back into bed now?” He attached a small, silent prayer to his words.
Cassie, though, shrugged noncommittally, and Sam knew she didn’t want to go to sleep. She could go to sleep anytime. Now, she wanted to talk. She needed to talk. And Sam had learned, from hard won experience, to let her do it. “All right, come here,” he said, patting his lap, and as she scrambled up into it, she began almost immediately to talk again about the mean girls in her baton twirling class, especially Riley, who had done far worse things, apparently, than accusing someone of having fat knees. And Sam listened, a little absently, and thought about Riley’s father, whom he’d gone to high school with. He’d been a bully, too, the kind of guy who was always pushing smaller kids into lockers, or flicking wet towels at his teammates in the locker room after basketball practice. Sam considered telling his daughter about him now, but then decided against it. And it was just as well, because Cassie had already moved on to a different topic, which was the amount of money in her piggy bank—seven dollars and forty-seven cents—and how best to spend it. She’d seen some sparkly barrettes in the window at Butternut Drugs, she told Sam, and she really liked them, but Tara had the same barrettes, and the sparkly stuff on them had already rubbed off, so maybe she should buy a glass animal instead. Sam started to comment, but she changed the subject again. She’d lost a flip-flop today, she told him, it was white with blue polka dots, and she hadn’t had time to look for it yet. Still, she listed now all the places it might be. Then she talked, for a little while, about the little ballerina that used to twirl around inside her jewelry box whenever she lifted the lid. She’d broken the ballerina off recently because she’d wanted to play with her, she explained, outside the jewelry box, but now she was sorry. She’d tried to put her back on her twirly thing, but she wouldn’t stay on it, and Cassie was worried she might never be able to dance again.
There was more after this, about other things, but Sam lost the thread of it. He was remembering instead when he and Alicia had separated three years ago and he’d moved from Minneapolis to this cabin on Butternut Lake with Cassie, Hunter, and Tim. He’d grown up on the lake and although college, marriage, and a career had taken him away from it, he’d always imagined that one day he’d come back here to live. So when he and Alicia’s marriage had ended, Sam had suggested that he and the kids move to Butternut and Alicia, after much soul searching, had agreed.
That first year after the divorce, though, there had been a lot of challenges for Sam. He’d been completely unnerved, for instance, by Cassie’s nighttime monologues. He thought he knew how to parent his sons. He’d grown up in a family full of boys, and he assumed that the rules for raising them were pretty straightforward. They needed to be fed, and kept reasonably clean, and they needed someone—him, in this case—to basically hold a gun to their head every night while they did their homework. But if his sons seemed to him to be like sturdy houseplants, his daughter seemed more like a hothouse flower. And when he’d gone to tuck her in that first night at the cabin, and she’d starting talking, and kept talking, he’d felt completely out of his depth. What if she asked him a question he couldn’t answer? Or needed advice he couldn’t give? But then he’d realized that it wasn’t answers or advice she needed—it was something much simpler. She needed to be listened to, and that, at least, he knew he could do.
Now, though, Cassie’s words, which had taken on a new urgency, broke into his thoughts. “Do you think that’s true, Daddy?” she asked, looking up at him, intently.
“Oh, absolutely,” he said.
“You do?” She looked alarmed.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry. What are we talking about?”
“About Janelle. About whether she saw a ghost or not.”
“Oh, no. Of course not. Ghosts aren’t real, Cassie. You know that.”
“I know. I know,” she said, looking relieved. “I just forgot.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Do you know what I think?” she asked.
“What?”
“I think Janelle just has a really good imagination.”
He smiled, and kissed the top of her head. “I think so, too,” he said. “Now, is there any chance that you could put yourself back to bed?”
She shook her head solemnly.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, with a barely audible sigh of resignation. “Let’s go.” But he was back a few minutes later, after depositing her, firmly, into her bed, begging off reading another bedtime story, and promising her, once again, that ghosts were not real, and then checking her closet for her just to be sure they weren’t, and finally leaving the hall light on in case they really might be. No sooner had he sat down in front of his computer, though, than his cell phone rang. “Oh, for God’s sakes,” he said under his breath, but when he saw the name on the incoming call he forgot to be irritated and hit the “talk” button instead.
“Are you still awake?” he asked, by way of saying “hello.”
“Awake?” she said. “I’m still at work.”
“Alicia, it’s ten o’clock,” he protested.
“I know. But I have opening arguments tomorrow, and I need to go over them.”
“I thought you tried to plead your cases out. You know, save the taxpayers’ money.”
“Usually, we do. But this one’s going to trial.”
“What’s it about?” he asked, interested. Sometimes he thought what he missed most about their marriage were the daily updates she used to give him on her job.
Now he heard her sigh, and he heard her rustling around, and he knew what she was doing. She was doing what she did at the end of any long workday. She was slipping off her low-heeled pumps, running her fingers lightly over her stocking clad feet, and, wheeling her swivel chair back, she was putting those feet—small and delicate—up on her desk, and in so doing, she was exposing a few more inches of her slender legs as her pencil skirt rode demurely up her thighs. There had been a time when any one of those movements would have left him completely undone. But that time was over.
“What’s the case about?” he asked again, sensing she’d settled into this more relaxing position.
“It’s . . .” She hesitated. “It’s pretty depressing, actually,” she said, finally. “I’d rather not talk about it. Tell me about the kids instead,” she said wistfully. “I want to hear about something good for a change.”
Sam smiled. He understood. It was hard sometimes, in her line of work, to remember there was good in the world. So he told her about the kids. He told her about his conversations with Hunter and with Cassie, and he knew, from experience, not to omit a single detail, like the “killer bee fountain” Hunter and Tim wanted for the Fourth of July and the twirling ballerina Cassie had liberated from her jewelry box with somewhat predictable results.
“I can remember wanting to take my jewelry box ballerina out when I was Cassie’s age, too,” Alicia said, amused.
“Well, that ballerina’s danced her last Swan Lake. Cassie will survive, though. What she might not survive is the fact that I still can’t figure out how to French braid her hair. Apparently, all the girls at day camp are wearing it that way. But I can’t do it. I should be able to. I can still tie all those sailing knots my dad taught me. And I can tie flies, too, for fly-fishing. Why can’t I do this thing to her hair?”
“I don’t know. But don’t worry about it,” Alicia said. “I’ll do it when the kids are staying with me next weekend. She can wear it home and sleep in it Sunday night, and then wear it to camp on Monday.”
“Still . . .” he said, looking over at his laptop.
“Sam,” Alicia said, her tone changing. “There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
“Discuss, huh? That sounds serious,” he said, only half joking.
“It’s not serious, yet. But it could be.”
“Oh,” he said, sitting up straighter. He’d known this moment would come, eventually, he just hadn’t known when it would come. “Who, uh . . . who is he?”
“He’s an investigator in the DA’s office.”
“What kind of stuff does he investigate?”
“White collar crime, mostly. It’s interesting. Complicated, but interesting. He spends most of his time on computers. And Sam? He’s a nice guy. I think you’d like him. And I think, I hope, the kids will like him, too.”
“They haven’t met him yet?”
“No. And they won’t, either, until I think it might . . . you know, go the distance.”
He didn’t say anything. He was still trying out the idea of Alicia dating someone.
“Anyway,” she said, when the silence grew too long. “It’s still strictly a weeknight relationship. Which is the way I want it to be for now. My weekends are all about the kids.”
“I know that,” Sam said. And it was true. It was why Alicia worked such brutal hours during the week, so she could have her weekends free for the kids. It was probably why she was dating someone she’d met at work. Where else would she have the opportunity to meet anyone?
“Are you okay with this, Sam?’ she asked now.
“I’m okay with it,” Sam said, deciding that he was.
“Is there anyone . . . you’re interested in?” Alicia asked.
“Not right now.”
“But when you do start seeing someone, Sam, could you give me a heads-up?”
“You’ll be the first to know,” he said. “After me, that is.”
She chuckled. “That’s fair. I’ll see you on Friday, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. Typically, on Friday afternoons he drove the kids to Twin Harbors, which was halfway between Butternut Lake and the Twin Cities, and Alicia met them there and drove them the rest of the way back to her house in a suburb of Minneapolis.