by Peg Herring
Arlis continued as if Shelley had not spoken. “Wear your life vest. Don’t set it nearby, wear it.”
Thanks, Aunt Stupid! Brodie wanted to say. What real sailor didn’t observe proper safety precautions? Even though she swam like an otter, Gramps had taught her to be smart on the water.
“And don’t go swimming until an hour after you eat lunch.” As Arlis said this, Scarlet raised an eyebrow. They had talked about such myths at length, because Scarlet did not want Brodie to be what she termed “an ignoramus.” She cautioned, however, that it was useless to contradict those who spouted such nonsense. “If they want to believe that going around without a hat gives one a cold, let them,” Scarlet had said. “People believe what they like, but I agree with your grandfather. Informed opinions are best.”
As Brodie checked to see they had everything they needed, Arlis told a story about how Leland, “an excellent sailor,” almost met with catastrophe when a storm came up on the lake unexpectedly. “Will had to go out in the rowboat and help him get the boat back to shore,” she said. “It wasn’t his fault. On the Lakes, a storm can arise quickly. He couldn’t have known.”
That was how it always was with Leland stories. He was blameless, innocent, but oh, so smart.
When Bud finally came downstairs, he found Brodie waiting with ill-disguised impatience and Scarlet reading a novel. They wore bathing suits, but Scarlet had put khaki shorts and a soft cotton shirt over her one-piece and pulled her hair up, ready for a day in the wind and sun.
“I think you told me once that you’ve sailed before, Miss McMorran.”
“I have.”
Bud smiled tightly. “I suppose there aren’t many places in Ireland where one isn’t near the sea.”
“That’s true.”
Brodie thought the conversation had some sort of edge to it, but she didn’t see why. Scarlet seemed tense, Bud defensive. Things would be better on the boat, she figured.
Or not. Scarlet remained reserved, even prim. As soon as they were aboard, she took out her novel and started reading, as if banishing her companions from her mind. Brodie and Bud cast off, motored out into the lake, and then set about getting ready, falling into a surprisingly easy rhythm. She kept the tiller steady as he raised the mainsail, expertly clamping the lines into their cleats and tightening them. Watching Bud, it occurred to Brodie that they worked well together because Gramps had taught them both. They did things the way he had done them.
The sail caught the wind and they were off, pulled across the water by unseen but powerful forces. It was thrilling for Brodie to be out on the boat again. It had been in storage for a couple of summers, shut away so as not to remind Gramps of his advancing age. Everything came back to her now: how to belay the lines, how to steer toward a point, and when to tack.
Bud seemed to be enjoying himself too. “Gramps told me you were good,” he said, “but I thought he was bragging.”
Her face warmed at the first compliment Bud had ever given her, and she asked an impulsive question. “Why don’t you like sailing?”
He frowned slightly. “Who said I didn’t?”
“Gramps.”
Bud chuckled. “I love sailing. I didn’t like racing, which is pretty cut-throat.” She must have looked surprised, because he added quickly, “Gramps was never unsportsmanlike, but some of them are terrible. If they don’t win, it has to be someone’s fault.” He paused. “Kind of like corporate America.”
She thought about that for a while. “You don’t like business?”
He chuckled again. “I really, really don’t.” His expression turned serious. “I don’t want to be the guy who drives some other guy out of business so I can pick up more customers. I’m the guy who likes this.” He pointed at the clear water around them. “Sailing around in circles if I want to, with no particular place to go.”
“But you said Gramps wasn’t a cut-throat.”
“He wasn’t.” A note in his voice made her think there was more he could have said. “When he started, his product was the only one of its kind. People needed it and he sold it to them. Now it’s all sales projections and market share and loss minimalization.” Bud sighed. “I thought we both would have been better out of it.”
Brodie looked at Bud with new interest. She had always assumed that he wanted to be what he was, a businessman. But here he was, explaining his feelings to her as if what she thought mattered. “If you sell the company, what will you do?”
He eyed her warily and then grinned, leaning toward her and lowering his voice. “You want to know what I’d like to do?”
“Sure.”
Glancing at Scarlet, who paid them no mind at all, he said, “I’d like to own a little inn somewhere around here, one with a really nice restaurant.”
It was about the last thing Brodie expected. “A restaurant?”
“I’m a pretty good cook.”
“But you’ve got more money than Donald Trump.”
Bud put up a hand. “Not quite. And even Donald Trump doesn’t want what he’s got. He’s always trying something else, isn’t he? I guess it’s what makes people people.”
She thought about that. “I like to cook too.”
“There. We can be partners.” She looked up, suspecting he was making fun of her, but his expression was serious. “Look. Neither of us ever has to earn our living. That’s the gift Gramps left us. I say we do what we like to do and forget about adding to our assets.”
Brodie felt almost giddy. Bud did not hate her, did not hold a grudge for those long-ago pranks. He spoke as if they were going forward together.
Encouraged by his attitude, she made a timid request. “Do you think I could use some of my money to help kids like me?”
He shrugged casually. “Gramps did some things along that line. I can show you the details and you can consider expanding on it. He had a soft spot for kids, that’s for sure.”
Brodie brushed some sand from the seat beside her. “I always think about the ones who don’t have a Gramps to come and take them away.”
Bud turned to her. “It was bad, huh?”
She shrugged. “I guess.” She considered telling him about Jeannie, but she did not.
Bud was watching the lake, automatically checking the wind currents. His thoughts seemed to parallel Brodie’s. “My mother never mistreated me, but I figured out early on that she had better things to do than take care of a kid. She left me with Gramps for longer and longer periods, and I think finally he told her she should either be a mother or give me to him for good.” He tried for levity. “Guess we know what her choice was.”
Brodie thought about the things her mother had chosen over her: hypodermic needles, odd-smelling cigarettes, and men whose laughter was insincere, even to the ears of a toddler.
Bud adjusted a line, pulling it snug. “I think we have the opportunity to do some good with Gramps’ money. If you have no objections, I plan to sell the company and look for a place around here where I can try my hand at restauranteuring—is that even a word?”
She shrugged, watching the arrow at the top of the mast and adjusting the tiller.
“You have time to decide what you want to do with your life. But if I stick around here, you won’t have to—um, I mean, I know Arlis will be good to you. I know she’s a little—” He gave up, unable to put his thought into words.
“You’re not going to leave me at the mercy of Aunt Awful.”
Bud grimaced. “Well, I wouldn’t have put it like that.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you stayed.” Brodie glanced at Scarlet, who still did not appear to be listening, although her face was flushed. The wind, maybe.
“You could go to culinary school,” Bud suggested. “There’s one in Traverse City, at the college. Then someday we really could work together.”
“Yeah.” Brodie could hardly believe it. Bud, the Perfect Grandchild, the person she’d always envied, was proposing a future where the two of them lived in the same house and possibly eve
n worked together. “Thanks.”
Looking slightly uncomfortable, Bud spoke what might have been a prepared statement. “Brodie, Gramps thought you were pretty amazing, and he was never wrong about people.” She didn’t know what to say, but he lightened the moment. “Now find us a picnic spot, First Mate. I’m starving.”
They put in for lunch at an island that was barely there: a single lump of land with a few scraggly trees and a rounded sandy spot on one side big enough for three people to spread out in the sun. There was no dock, so Bud dropped the anchor, hefted the cooler onto one shoulder, and slid over the side into waist-deep water. Scarlet and Brodie followed, gasping a little at the temperature. Once in, Brodie enjoyed the coolness and swam around the boat a couple of times while Scarlet and Bud waded ashore and set up the meal.
Scarlet was funny with Bud, like she was trying too hard to be nice. With Gramps, she had been warm but respectful. With Shelley and Briggs, she was friendly, listening with apparent interest to their accounts of mundane things. When she had to deal with Arnold or Arlis, her voice sounded different, a little too polite. That was how she sounded now when she spoke to Bud.
Hanging onto the ladder at the back of the boat, Brodie peered around it to observe them. Scarlet was setting out lunch on a towel she’d spread on the sand. Bud was trying to help, but she pretty much ignored him. Brodie wondered again why she did not like Bud, or at least did not trust him.
Scarlet’s reserve caused Brodie to rethink the morning, and she began to berate herself for the ease with which she had fallen under Bud’s spell. There had to be something wrong with Bud’s easy charm that a kid couldn’t see but Scarlet could. And you, dumbass, fell right in with his plan. “Sure, Bud, we can work together to benefit mankind and make delicious veal scampi!” He was probably laughing to himself this minute about how easy it was to get the kid to go along.
Brodie resolved to be different on the way back. Cool, like Scarlet, not stupid like Brodie.
A voice almost at her ear—maybe in her ear—said, “Smart!”
“Huh?” She spoke aloud in surprise, turning to see who might be nearby.
“Smart!” the voice repeated. Brodie shivered. Time to get out of the lake and warm up. Hunger was causing delusions. “Smart!” the voice repeated.
“Flippin’ nuts!” Brodie countered. With a strong kick, she pushed herself through the clear water, heading for shore. She didn’t know where the voice came from, but maybe the company of others would block it out.
AS SCARLET PASSED Shelley at breakfast, Seamus had jumped from the tutor to the cook. Shelley was quite a change, rather like passing from a formal living room to the area where a family really lives. Shelley had opinions about everything, and she seemed perfectly willing to share them.
As Bud, Brodie, and Scarlet left on their planned excursion, Shelley waved approvingly from the kitchen door. “Nice,” she muttered to herself. “That’s nice.”
Following Shelley’s thoughts was almost relaxing. Seamus learned a lot as she reminisced about her years with the Dunbar family while cleaning the kitchen. She had been employed by William Dunbar in 1985, at first only when the family came to northern Michigan on vacation. Back then, Shelley and her husband had made a business of opening and closing summer homes, readying them for winter by draining the pipes and closing and insulating drafty spots. In spring, they reversed the process, turning on water and electricity, opening windows to air the place, and vacuuming up the hundreds of dead flies that magically appear in unused rooms.
When Dunbar moved permanently from Chicago to Frankfort, he’d come as a widower, without his beloved Lila but with his young grandson instead. Shelley and Briggs became full-time employees, and Bud had become Shelley’s pet. She’d loved to watch him roam the property, returning with boy treasures for her: pretty rocks, almost-whole shells, and live creatures he always carefully replaced once she’d admired them. Shelley had been sad to see Bud go away to school and sorry he’d stayed away so much since. Always busy, the young ones! “That’s what funerals are for,” she said aloud. “Bring them all home. Bring them together.”
Briggs came into the kitchen precisely at eleven forty-five. He took a seat in a chair under the clock and turned his body sideways, watching his wife prepare their lunch. “Everybody gone?”
“Yup. Arlis went to run some errands, Arnold took the day off, and Mr. Marks is on his way back to Chicago.” Shelley had fried several pieces of bacon until they were crisp and set them on paper towels to drain. Cutting a tomato thinly, she covered two pieces of bread with the slices. Next came lettuce, and then the bacon. On two more pieces of bread she slathered mayo and put them atop their mates, pressing the whole until the lettuce and bacon crunched. Finally, she cut the sandwiches diagonally with a sharp knife.
“I sent them three off on the boat.” Briggs took a bite of the sandwich and spoke around it. “That Scarlet sure don’t like Bud.”
Shelley gave him a look. “I think it might be the opposite. But I don’t know what he ever did to make her mad at him.”
Briggs grinned. “Maybe it’s what he didn’t do!”
“Oh, stop. Everything’s about sex to you.”
“No, it ain’t. There’s baseball.”
She punched him playfully on the arm. “You want tea or milk with that?”
He pinched her rear. “I’ll have the sheepherder’s special. A glass of milk and a piece of—”
“Stop, or I’ll send you to the shed to eat your sandwich.” She laughed, though, and sat down across from her husband to eat her own lunch. “We’ll see how things are when they come back. Maybe that girl will warm up a little with a day in the sun.”
Seamus thought of his time with Scarlet. Something had turned her against Bud, caused her to think of him as a snake. Was it something Bud had done, or was Briggs correct and he had somehow failed to be the man she had imagined him to be?
THE WIND HAD PICKED UP by the time the three boaters finished lunch and packed the cooler with the remains of their meal. The sun had become hot, so the breeze on Brodie’s skin felt good, even where her wet suit clung to her body. Once they had waded back to the boat and hoisted themselves aboard, Scarlet dug some sun-block out of her bag. When Brodie was protected to Scarlet’s satisfaction, she looked uncertainly at Bud. After a brief hesitation, she offered the sun-block to him. When he took it, she did not offer to cover his back, as she had with Brodie.
After stowing the cooler and pulling in the anchor, Bud set sail for home, raising the jib as well as the main to better catch the wind. For a few seconds the sail whipped noisily, but soon it quieted and they raced over the water. Caught up in the joy of it, Brodie forgot her vow to remain silent. She called out, “Let her go, Bud!”
With a grin of agreement, Bud let the little boat have her way with the freshening breeze. Soon Brodie was filled with the sheer joy of speed. The wind pulled at her hair, and she played with it, turning her head so the strands slapped against her face, and then facing the wind so the hair flew out behind her like a flag.
Sitting near the back of the boat, Scarlet tried to keep reading, but the wind fluttered the pages of her book, almost lifting it out of her hands. Her bookmark flew up, and she grabbed at it too late as it twirled in the air behind them. When Brodie laughed at her futile effort, Bud turned to see what the commotion was about. At that moment the mainsail corrected in response to the jib’s shift. The boom swung toward Bud, who was turned away. Despite a yell from Brodie at the last second, he took the full impact of the metal pole on the side of his head and dropped like a stone. The tiller banged against the transom. The boat tilted sharply and then righted itself, swinging into the wind.
“Oh my god! Oh my god!” Blood spurted from Bud’s scalp as he lay dazed on the deck.
“Brodie!” Scarlet called above the flapping of the loose sail. “Take the tiller and hold it steady until I see if he’s okay.” Scarlet moved to Bud’s side. He was conscious but unaware, mumbling incoh
erently. She used the ends of her shirt to wipe the blood away. “He’ll need stitches.”
At the tiller, Brodie tore her gaze away from Bud and looked ahead. They were a couple of miles from shore, headed toward the center of the lake. Could she turn the boat and guide it home by herself? She was not sure.
Scarlet moved to the storage compartment and took out one of the half-frozen ice-packs Shelley had put in with the drinks. Tearing the back section of her shirt into strips, she bound them tightly over the wound. Next she put the cold-pack inside the shirtsleeves and laid the bundle over the improvised bandage. Finally, she wrapped Bud’s whole head in a beach towel.
He was still groggy when she finished, but he was starting to be Bud again. “I’ve got to—”
“Sit still,” she told him. “You don’t have to do anything except rest until we get you to a doctor.”
“But—”
“Just rest, machree. Rest.” She patted his cheek in a manner very different from the Scarlet of moments before.
Bud obeyed, closing his eyes. Scarlet came to where Brodie stood at the tiller, shaking with fear and unable to decide what to do as the shore receded. “Sit with him,” Scarlet ordered. “Try to keep him still.”
Brodie sat down on the deck beside Bud, who was pale but awake. He opened his eyes and smiled faintly at her. “Sorry to ruin your trip.”
“It was an accident.”
“It was stupid. I always screw things up.”
Brodie was surprised. Bud doubted himself? She was the one who always did stupid things.
The voice in her head spoke. “Okay,” it said. “Okay.” Brodie didn’t know if the voice meant she was okay, Bud was okay, or that the situation was going to be okay. She did notice, however, that Bud looked at Scarlet and repeated, “Stupid.”
Scarlet was impressive. She took charge of the Catalina as if she’d sailed it for years. First she dropped the sail, leaving it furled on the hatch as she moved to the outboard motor and started it up. With an expert hand, she turned the boat in a wide circle and headed for shore, angling toward their dock.