The Last Thing You Said

by Sara Biren

  “That right? I sure hope you know what the fuck you’re doing, kid. We’re paying a lot of money for this.”

  I can’t help it. I laugh. “I sure as fuck do, sir. I grew up on this lake.”

  The middle one, the old codger’s son, pats me on the back. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

  The youngest is twenty-five, married with a baby, a boy. “Couple more years and he’ll be out here with us. Four generations.”

  “I’ll probably be dead by then,” the old codger says.

  His son shakes his head. “We should be so lucky.”

  I listen to their banter the rest of the morning. They know what they’re doing, so basically my job is to move from hot spot to hot spot. Between the three of them, the well fills with fish quickly: perch, bluegills, even a couple of walleye.

  We’re about to pull anchor and head back to shore when the old man asks me, “So what’s your story, kid?”

  “Sir?” I’m not sure exactly which story he’d like to hear. The one about my drunk father? Or how about the time my sister died in this lake and I didn’t get to her in time to save her? That’s a good one.

  “I mean, why the hell is a good-looking kid like you out here fishing with the three of us? You got nothing better to do?”

  Sounds about right.

  I don’t know why, but I tell him the truth. “It’s my home, this lake. It’s the only place I want to be these days. The only place where I don’t need to give a shit about anything.”

  He narrows his eyes at me and nods. “And you better be damn grateful for it.”

  “I am, sir.” I pull up anchor.

  The Promise

  One warm summer day, Trixie and Lulu, who were older now, packed a picnic lunch and walked to their favorite park, with rolling green hills, endless trees, and their beloved lake. They ran through the park, long hair and a dusting of silver and gold trailing behind them. They turned cartwheels. They twirled, arms wide, their faces to the sky. They searched for four-leaf clovers and found dozens, which they set in a pile on their plaid picnic blanket. They sat close together and were warmed by the patch of sun that streamed through the trees.

  “Lulu,” Trixie said, “I want to talk to you about Ben.”

  Lulu looked up in surprise. “What about him?” she asked, anxious. They didn’t often talk about Ben or Lulu’s feelings for him.

  “I know it must be hard for you, seeing him with other girls.”

  Lulu didn’t say anything.

  “He’ll come around,” Trixie said. “I know my brother, Lulu. Be patient.”

  Lulu pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. “How can you be so sure, Trix? Sometimes he talks to me, sometimes I wonder if he notices I’m even there.”

  “Trust me, he notices. And someday, he will love you as much as you love him. As much as I love you. I promise.”

  For a long time, Lulu didn’t say anything. She picked at the fringe at the edge of the blanket. She thought about what Trixie had said—that she should be patient, that Ben would figure it out. But what if he didn’t? What if Lulu waited, but Ben never learned to love her? What then?

  Trixie scooped up the pile of clovers. “Hold out your hands, Lulu.”

  Lulu did, and Trixie dropped the clovers. They poured down and multiplied and spilled out over the edges of Lulu’s fingers.

  “For luck,” Trixie said. “I promise you.”

  “Trixie, how can you be so sure it’s going to happen?”

  “I know it. I know it in my heart.”

  JULY

  What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

  —Helen Keller

  23 · Ben

  Guthrie’s brother Eddie throws a party every Fourth of July. He and his buddies set off fireworks from an island in the middle of Story Lake that will forever be known as Firecracker Island. The morning of the Fourth, we’re roasting hot dogs over the campfire for breakfast, and I ask Eddie if I can shoot them off, too.

  He laughs. “There’s not much to it. They’re wired together, so we only light it once. It’s mostly work up front. Manual labor. You up for that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Eddie’s head is cocked to one side, and he’s got this look on his face like something is off. “You know it’s illegal, right?”

  I shrug. “So?”

  “You could get in a shitload of trouble if we get caught.”

  “Dude,” I say. “You’ve been doing this for what, three years? You really think some cop is going to drive his ass all the way out here to bust you?”

  “Uh, ever hear of water patrol?”

  “I know all of ’em,” I say. “They’re too lazy to bother coming out this far.”

  “Well, whatever. It’s your funeral.”

  There’s a pause.

  “You know what I mean,” he says, his face bright red.

  • • •

  Late afternoon, Guthrie and me, Eddie, and some of his hockey buddies load the fireworks and equipment onto the pontoon and a beat-up old speedboat. We make three trips out to the island.

  Eddie wasn’t kidding about manual labor. It’s hot, and before we’ve unloaded the first haul, I’ve got sweat running down my back. I strip off my shirt and carry another of Eddie’s custom-made wooden crates over to the clearing on the beach. Each group of fireworks is on a separate plywood plank or wooden crate, labeled one to twenty-six.

  “There’s no thirteen,” I tell Guthrie. He’s carrying number four, a dozen Roman candles.

  “Eddie’s superstitious,” he says. “I don’t blame him. Bad luck and pyrotechnics don’t mix.”

  “Drinking and pyrotechnics don’t mix, either, but I see that hasn’t stopped them.”

  “Eddie’s not drinking today. Me neither.”

  “When do you?” I ask. “I’ll drink enough for the both of us.”

  “Where’s Dana today?”

  I lean over into the boat for number seven, layer cakes. “Apparently I’m not as irresistible as she originally thought. She’s shopping with her mom and her sisters at the Mall of America.”

  “That sounds miserable.” He picks up a box and laughs. “Check this out. God of Fire. Warning: shoots flaming balls. This is gonna be so good.”

  • • •

  By the time everything’s wired and ready to go, Guthrie’s backyard and beach are crawling with people.

  “You might as well watch from down there,” Eddie tells me and Guthrie and points to the shore. “Like I said, we light it once and the rest takes care of itself.”

  “How much did you spend on this shit?” I ask.

  Eddie shrugs. “About a grand, I think.”

  Shit. If I had an extra grand lying around, I sure as hell wouldn’t use it to buy fireworks.

  “All that money, all that time, and what do you get? Twenty-five, thirty minutes?”

  “If that,” Eddie says. “But it’s a freaking amazing thirty minutes.” He waves his arms over the platform of fireworks. “This setup is a work of art. It takes a lot of time and knowhow to create the perfect sequence, you know?”

  “Doesn’t seem worth it.”

  “Is anything we do worth the effort we put into it?” Eddie says. “Say you sit out on the boat all day and never get a single bite. Worth it?”

  “Never happens,” I joke.

  “I’m speaking in generalizations,” Eddie says. “Sometimes it’s about the experience, you know?”

  The experience.

  We move our camp chairs down to the shore. I’m not drunk. I thought maybe by now I would be. But I’m tired. I push up from the chair and stretch out on the cool sand. There’s nothing like summer in Minnesota lake country. The air is humid and still. The wake of a slow-moving pontoon laps against the shore in a gentle rhythm.

  “Everybody set?” Eddie yells, and the first of the shells launches.

  I think about what he said, about how sometimes it
’s more about the experience, even if the show only lasts for a fraction of the time it took to prepare for it.

  The sky fills with blinking, flashing sparks of white.

  “Nice,” Guthrie says. “Diamonds.”

  A mosquito buzzes in my ear. I slap at it and another one on my arm.

  “Lucy,” I say. It comes out of nowhere. I haven’t thought about her all day. “There’s a song, right, something about Lucy and diamonds in the sky?”

  Guthrie laughs. “Something like that.”

  24 · Lucy

  Simon goes home for the Fourth of July, so I spend the night at Hannah’s. We sit on the deck, waiting for sundown and the fireworks over Halcyon Lake.

  “So do you miss your boyfriend?” she asks, handing me a glass of lemonade.

  “Yes.” I take a tentative sip. “What’s in this?”

  “Vodka, what else?” She sits down. “Are you in love with him?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I suppose we could try to figure that out. We’ve got all night.” She picks up her phone from the arm of her deck chair and starts tapping on the screen. “Let’s see, searching for are you in love quiz.”

  “Hannah . . .”

  “Here we go. ‘Number one: When you first saw your special someone, you A. Thought he was cute. B. Didn’t find him attractive but he grew on you. C. Didn’t give him a second look. D. Were deeply attracted to him.’”

  I roll my eyes and Hannah laughs.

  “‘Number two: How often do you think of your sweetheart when you’re apart?’ ‘Sweetheart’? What is this, the 1940s? ‘A. Every waking moment. B. Several times a day. C. Once or twice a day. D. Hardly ever.’ Well, Lucille? Your answer?”

  “Hannah.”

  “Fine.” She continues to scroll. “Oh, wait, one more. This one’s perfect for you. ‘Your sweetheart gives you a romantic card. What do you do with it? A. Sleep with it under your pillow. B. Scrapbook it. C. File it away. D. Toss it.’”

  I slip my hand into my pocket and find the agate. I haven’t told Hannah about it. “Would you stop already?”

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “I’m not going to find out from some quiz you found on the Internet.” I pause. None of these questions sound like anything I would ask myself about Simon—well, maybe the one about thinking he was cute. He is definitely cute. But . . .

  Deeply attracted.

  Every waking moment.

  Carry it in my pocket.

  I take a long drink of my lemonade. It’s strong, and the alcohol swirls through me, loosens me. “What about you? Is Dustin your special someone?”

  She laughs. “I don’t need to take a quiz to know I’m not in love with Dustin. He’s fun and we always have a good time, but Dustin is not true-love material, at least not for me. And shoot, who says it has to be true love, anyway? I just want to have a good time, try new things, meet new people. Nothing wrong with that, am I right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You like Simon, though, right? You have fun with him?”

  I do. He’s sweet and attentive. He takes me to the movies, we play mini-golf even though he has not improved, I sit at the lakeside patio with him while he paints. It’s one of the things I like best about him, how he’s able to capture his surroundings in watercolor and acrylic. Sometimes we walk down to the beach between our houses, sheltered from view by thick trees, and kiss, falling to the sand, until our lips are bruised and our breaths come heavy.

  “Yes. I like him.”

  Her glass is empty, so she reaches for mine and takes a drink. “Lucille, it’s okay to like Simon. If not Simon, some other guy. You don’t need anyone’s permission.”

  What she doesn’t say: especially Ben’s permission. She’s right.

  “And nobody said it had to be love,” she continues.

  I blow out a long breath. The idea of falling in love with Simon—of falling in love with anyone but Ben—scares me. The swirl spirals down, reaches my toes, but now it’s more than looseness, it’s relief, too. Nobody said it had to be love.

  But there’s plenty of summer left for me and Simon, and I’m going to make the best of it. “I know.”

  “Just remember that, okay?” She shakes her big blond hair. “Want to watch the fireworks from the middle of the lake? Dad got us a new paddleboat.”

  A few days after the Fourth, I’m eating breakfast at the resort and Tami announces, “Our nephew is getting married in Duluth in a couple of weeks, and I wondered if you would like to come along to help with Emily.”

  “Sure,” I say, not at all sure. The first question that comes to mind is—which side of the family, John’s or Tami’s? If it’s John’s nephew, the cousin I met on vacation last year, then Ben and his parents will be there.

  “We’ll go up Friday morning and come home Sunday.” She prattles on about the hotel and the church and the rehearsal but never once says who’s getting married. After a few minutes, I put up my hand to stop her.

  “Whose wedding?” I ask.

  “Aaron. You’ve met him, haven’t you?”

  Ben’s cousin. I nod.

  Tami is talking nonstop. “This will be a nice little getaway for you, and you won’t have to take care of Emily the whole time. You’ll have some free time, too. Our hotel is right on the harbor. We’re getting two rooms so you and Emily would have a room to yourselves. A suite, actually, so after she goes to sleep you can stay up and watch a movie or something.”

  I nod. I’m their nanny. Of course they expect I’ll go away for the weekend with them. And I love Duluth, I love Lake Superior.

  “I’m so glad you’ll come with us. This is just what you need, a little time away. And maybe—maybe if you and Ben get some time together—”

  “What?” The air is suddenly stifling. What is she saying? Did she invite me along to try to patch things up between Ben and me?

  Tami has this terrible, pitying look on her face. “Oh, Lucy, I know how hard it’s been since Trixie died. My heart breaks for you. You lost your best friend. And Ben—well, I don’t know what happened between you two, but I know that you aren’t friends anymore. And maybe—maybe if you had a chance to talk about it away from here—”

  “No,” I say. “Please, stop.”

  “Lucy—”

  I can’t talk to her about this anymore. “Emily’s waiting for me in the tree house. I have to go.” I open the sliding door and step out onto the deck, down the stairs, across the yard to the old oak tree.

  I climb up and sit on the worn floorboards of the tree house, my back against the plywood wall, while Emily plays tea party, and I catch my breath. I think about the trip to Duluth with Trixie’s family last summer, one of the best weekends of my life.

  At the cabin, Trixie and I skipped stones on the lake while Ben sifted through the rocky beach.

  “Agates are quartz, you know,” Ben said. “And they’re pretty unique here because of the iron in the soil. The oxidation of the iron gives them that reddish-orange color. You want to help me look?”

  I glanced at Trixie. She was smiling. “Sure,” I said.

  “Did you know that the Lake Superior agate is Minnesota’s state gemstone?” Ben asked. “The agates were formed about a billion years ago. From lava eruptions. No, really, a billion years ago.”

  I nodded and smiled as he told me about glacial movement and why Lake Superior agates can be found in other regions of the state, thrilled that he was talking to me about something he loved.

  Later that weekend, we stopped at a lapidary shop in Beaver Bay filled with bin after bin of agates and other rocks. Ben must have spent an hour poring over each and every one, examining, humming to himself. After a while, Trixie and I got tired of waiting for him and left to buy ice cream cones from the diner next door.

  We sat on the bench outside the agate shop, licking the dripping ice cream from the sides of our waffle cones.

  “Rocks are boring,” Trixie said.


  “I don’t know,” I said. “The agates are pretty.”

  “You’re only saying that because you like Ben,” she whispered, and gave me a knowing smile over her ice cream.

  When Ben finally came out of the shop, he asked, “Where’s mine?” Then he pointed at me. “Maple nut, right?”

  I popped the last bit of waffle cone in my mouth and nodded.

  “Finally!” Trixie said. “What took so long?”

  Ben smiled. “I couldn’t leave until I found what I was looking for.”

  Trixie rolled her eyes.

  He looked at me and pointed to the corner of his mouth. “You’ve got ice cream on your face, Lu.” He turned to walk to the van.

  My face burned, and I scrubbed at my mouth with a napkin.

  “Come on.” Trixie pulled on my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Ben slid the door of the van open. Trixie climbed in and I started to follow her.

  “Wait,” Ben said. He tugged me back behind the van and pressed something into my hand.

  I looked at the object in my palm. It was the most beautiful thing—an odd-shaped agate, not quite an oval, not even an inch wide. The stone was polished to a bright shine, a deep rusty red with bands of ivory and pink and gray that together formed an L.

  “Oh,” I gulped. “Is this for me?”

  What a stupid thing to say.

  “Well, yeah.” Ben smiled.

  “It’s perfect,” I said, and I meant it. Everything about the agate was perfect—the irregular shape, the coloring, the fact that Ben had chosen it just for me. My heart pounded. “Thank you.”

  Thank you. That’s all I could say. I should have said more, but not there, not in front of Trixie and his parents.

  Something was happening between us.

  “Are you getting in or what?” Trixie called from inside the van and I turned, slipping the most perfect thing in the world into my pocket.

  I didn’t want Trixie to see. I didn’t want her to know. This was special, between Ben and me. It was the only secret I had from her, ever.

  For a long time, as we drove along the shore of Lake Superior, I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I gazed out over the vast blue water and thought about Ben, who sat beside me, silent. I was in agony, not knowing what he was thinking. Wanting to say more, to ask him if he happened to see this agate and thought of me, or if he set out to find me the perfect agate and this, the one with the L, was it? A tiny miracle in a bin of small, polished stones.