"I won't live with an alcoholic," Ali announced, her tone determined.
Ben looked her way and nodded slightly. "I can't blame you for that. You shouldn't have to."
"I mean it," Ali continued, annoyed by his answer. "I can't live with a drinker. Not again. Ever."
"I understand," Ben replied.
Silence ensued. Ali wasn't sure if he understood her completely. She thought about her mother, and how she'd struggled so hard with addiction.
"She got it from you, didn't she? My mom. She got her alcoholism from you," Ali said in a small voice.
Ben looked directly at her with sad eyes. "Yes, she did. Like I got it from my father, and he from his. It's a family gene you don't want to pass down to your child, and I regret that deeply."
Ali felt bad that she'd accused him of something he couldn't control. "I didn't mean to say it was your fault."
"No. I know it can't be helped. But I wish with all my heart that my Jen had been spared that problem," Ben said. "And my biggest hope is that I didn't pass it down to you, too."
"I don't ever plan on finding out if I'm like that," Ali said. "I don't ever want to drink. Ever."
Ben nodded. "You're a smart girl."
"Please, just promise me you won't drink, okay?" Ali asked, her tone softer.
Ben nodded. "You don't have to worry about me. But if it makes any difference to you, I never took a drink from that bottle yesterday."
"Then why?" Ali asked. "Why do you sit there and stare at it?"
Ben took a deep breath. "It reminds me of how painful it was, losing my Lizzie. It helps me remember her, and how much I loved her."
Ali frowned. "That's how you honor her memory? Most people honor their loved ones by visiting their grave and leaving flowers, not by staring at a bottle of whiskey."
Ben looked at Ali as if she'd thrown cold water on him. "I never thought of it that way. I guess that is how I've been honoring her memory."
"Well, maybe you should change that. Geez, do you think Grandma Lizzie would like it if she knew you were remembering her that way? It's terrible." Ali knew she was pushing him, and she expected him to get angry, but he didn't. He only looked defeated.
"I don't have a grave to go to," Ben said. "Lizzie insisted that she be cremated and have her ashes scattered across the lake. So I honored her wishes."
Ali sat there, aghast. Was that even legal? She didn't say anything though. She didn't want to upset him any more than she already had. "You could spend the day on the water. Or stare out at the lake, remembering the good times. Or you could sit with others who knew her and talk about her. But you don't have to sit in a dark cabin, brooding, staring at a bottle of booze."
Ben didn't reply. Looking at him, Ali could tell he was thinking about it. She just left it at that. She knew she'd said enough already.
The next morning, Ali came to the boat with a bundle in her arms, wrapped in newspaper.
"What on earth do you have there?" Ben asked after she'd climbed into the boat and was seated.
"You'll see," she said.
They took off across the lake to a new fishing spot. The morning was warmer and dryer than the morning before, and the sun shone through puffy white clouds as it made its way up into the topaz blue sky. Once they stopped, instead of pulling out her fishing rod, Ali carefully unwrapped the bundle. Inside the newspaper was a large bouquet of pink and white daisies.
Ben stared at the flowers warily. "Where did you get those?"
"I picked them yesterday along the road and down the trail we took to the dairy farm." When she saw the frown on his face she added, "Don't worry. Chase went with me. He brought along a gun so we'd be safe."
Ali picked up one of the pink daisies, pulled the flower from its stem, then carefully laid the flower face up in the lake. She watched as it slowly floated away from the boat.
"What are you doing?" Ben asked.
"I figured since the lake is where Grandma Lizzie's ashes were spread, this is where she was the happiest, so I'm leaving flowers for her," Ali told him.
Ali continued pulling the flowers from their stems and setting the blooms in the water to drift away as Ben watched her. Soon, she had a lovely line of flowers decorating the surface of the lake. Ali handed a single flower to Ben. "Do you want to help me?" she asked.
Ben hesitated, but then reached for the flower, pulled off the bloom, and leaned over the side to drop it in the water. It floated along to join the rest. "How did you know that daisies were my Lizzie's favorite flower?"
"Jo told me. She said Grandma loved white roses, but I knew I wouldn't be able to get any of those. But then she told me her favorite wildflowers were daisies. I knew I could find those easily."
Ben lifted another flower from the pile and dropped the daisy bloom into the water. Then another. "You know, the very first bouquet of flowers I ever gave your grandmother was a bunch of pink and white daisies. I was young and poor and couldn't afford to buy flowers in a store. But she liked them all the same. She said she liked them even more because I had picked them myself."
Ali smiled. It was a sweet story.
Ben's expression softened as he looked at Ali. "This was a nice idea, Ali. Thank you."
"Maybe we can do this every year for Grandma," Ali said as she set the last flower in the water. "It can be our way of remembering her."
"I'd like that," Ben said. And the two sat and watched as the flowers spread out over the lake.
Chapter Sixteen
As the summer days slipped by, Ali thought more and more about the possibility of her father still living somewhere around Auburn. She searched through her mother's possessions for clues to her father's identity, but found nothing. She thought the yearbooks might tell her something of his identity, so she scoured through each of them carefully from her mom's ninth grade year through her senior year. Ali paid particularly close attention to the senior yearbook. Ali's birthday was in January, so that meant her mother became pregnant in April of the previous year. From what Ali could tell, her mom hadn't realized she was pregnant until July, and that was the month she'd run away. The question was, who had she been seeing in April that year?
Ali's birth certificate didn't list the name of her father, so even though she had a copy of it, it told her nothing. It was as if her father had slipped into her mother's life for only a moment, then slipped away again. But Ali was determined to find out his identity.
In the box with the yearbooks, Ali had found a dried wrist corsage that was so old and brittle she didn't dare move it lest it fall apart. There was also a light blue bow tie in the box. These were obviously mementos from a prom night, but Ali didn't know for sure if it was her mother's senior prom or an earlier one. Chase had told her that since the school was so small, grades ten through twelve were allowed to go to the prom.
One Thursday afternoon while Ali and Jo were putting away that week's food delivery, Ali brought up the subject of her mother. Since Ali rarely spoke of Jen, Jo looked up at her curiously.
"What do you want to know?" Jo asked as she stacked cans of vegetables in the pantry.
"Was she popular? Did she have a lot of friends?" Ali asked while she busied herself with pouring a bag of sugar into an airtight container.
Jo stopped a moment, thinking. "I'm not sure if she was popular in school or not. There were only about two hundred kids in the entire school and that included sixth through twelfth grade. Everyone knew everyone. She rarely brought any friends out to the lodge. I remember your mother mostly being busy with homework or working around here. I guess she did attend school activities when she was older, like basketball and football games. She played a sport, too, but I don't remember what it was."
"It was volleyball," Ali said. "And she was a cheerleader, too. I saw it in her yearbooks."
Jo smiled. "I'm sorry. I don't remember much. It was a long time ago, and I was older than Jen and we didn't really talk much. I just remember her being a quiet girl who loved being out in the boat wi
th her dad and going on long hikes in the woods."
Ali was disappointed that Jo didn't know much about her mother, but she didn’t let that discourage her. That afternoon, she studied her mother's senior yearbook again. She looked through the prom pictures in the yearbook, then realized that they were from the year before. There were no pictures of her mother in the prom photos, and since the pictures were in black and white, she couldn't tell what color the tuxes or dresses were.
One thing Ali did notice was that a select group of kids showed up in the majority of the photos throughout all of her mother's yearbooks. These were the popular kids, the ones who ran the student council, participated in several sports and activities, and who put together the yearbook. One boy's face in particular kept popping up. He was the captain of the basketball team, the football quarterback, and the lead runner on the track team. He also had the lead in the senior play. He was cute; tall, slender, with dark, wavy hair, and piercing eyes. When Ali saw his name, however, she couldn't believe it. Jared Halverson. That was the same last name as the man her grandfather hated so much, but she couldn't remember if his first name was Jared. After all, there were six Halversons in the eleventh and twelfth grades, so it might not be him. And the Halverson she'd seen in town and at the cabin hadn't been cute. She decided she'd ask Chase what his first name was again.
Another thing in her mother's senior yearbook caught her eye as well. There were autographs with well wishes all over the front and back pages, just like her other yearbooks. All were written in blue ink. Ali assumed her mother carried around a blue pen when she had her friends and teachers sign the book. Except one passage written in the bottom corner of the back cover had been scribbled out with black ink. And not just scribbled as if someone had made a mistake. It was scribbled over with hard-pressed lines indented into the cover. It was as if her mother hadn't wanted anyone to ever read this passage. Ali looked at it under the light, but try as she might, she couldn't make out the words under the scribbling.
That evening, Ali and Chase went out on the lake in the canoe and floated near the shore across the lake where the cliff rose above them. A set of loons drifted by them, and Chase smiled and pointed for Ali to look.
"See there?" Chase whispered. "Look on that loon's back."
Ali stared at both loons. After a moment, she saw what Chase was pointing at. "Is that a baby on its back?" she asked excitedly.
"Two," Chase replied. "The males generally carry the chicks on their backs."
Ali watched as the downy gray chicks rode on their father's back like a float in a parade. They were so cute and cuddly looking, they made her smile. "They're adorable," she told Chase, who grinned back at her.
"They'll grow fast. We're lucky to have seen them this small," Chase said.
The two teens watched as the loons floated away. The evening was peaceful, and the lake was calm. The only ripple in the water was from the loons swimming by, and their canoe.
"We still have to find a day to go hiking on the old Indian Trail over here," Chase said, pointing to the cliff. "The view from the cliff is incredible."
Ali looked up to the top of the cliff. "It looks kind of scary."
Chase laughed. "It isn't. The trail goes up behind it. It's steep, but it's not like rock climbing. It's beautiful in the fall, but I'll be at school then."
Ali sighed, a sad expression crossing her face. "I keep forgetting that you're leaving for school this fall. Maybe I just try to forget because then I have to start school here, too. I'm not looking forward to that."
"You'll do fine. Kat will make sure you meet all the nice kids, and you can ignore the nasty ones like Emily and her little gang." Chase pretended to shiver, making Ali laugh.
"When do you have to leave?" she asked.
"The end of August. College starts the last week of August, and freshmen have to be there a week earlier for orientation."
"Wow. That's coming up fast. Are you excited?" Ali asked.
Chase shrugged. "I've wanted to go for years, but now that it's almost here, I'm not as excited as I thought I'd be. Maybe I'm afraid of going to a new school, too. Or maybe…" He paused and leaned closer to Ali. "Maybe I'm sad about leaving you behind."
Ali moved in closer, too. "Remember," she said in whisper. "I'm not allowed to muck up your life."
Chase shook his head slightly. "Don't worry. I won't let you," he said with a wink. He leaned in even closer. So close, their noses almost touched. Ali's blue eyes stared into the depths of his baby blues. Just as their lips were about to meet, a loud motor went off across the lake and startled them. Both teens looked over to the dock where the lodge boats were kept. They saw Ben standing in one of the older motor boats, pulling on the engine's starter cord.
Ali and Chase both sighed and pulled apart. Chase started lazily paddling the canoe back toward the lodge.
The sight of her grandfather reminded Ali of a question she had for Chase. "What's the first name of that Halverson guy my grandfather hates so much?"
"Jared. Why?"
Ali told Chase about how she'd seen him in her mother's yearbooks and how he'd been one of the popular guys who were involved in everything. "You know. The annoying type in school."
Chase grinned. "Hey, I was like that. Good grades, sports, homecoming king, school yearbook committee. In a small school, everyone is involved in a lot of different things."
"Yeah, I suppose so. My high school was so big there was too much competition to be in everything. So, if you were part of the yearbook committee, tell me why prom pictures were always from the previous year."
"The yearbook was already off to the printers by the time prom came around. We didn't have enough time to get it in." Chase cocked his head and looked curiously at Ali. "Why?"
Ali bit her lip. She was afraid Chase might think her ideas were silly. "I wanted to see who my mom went to prom with in her senior year. There's a dried up corsage and a guy's bow tie in one of her boxes, but no prom picture."
"Why don't you just ask Ben? He'd know."
"I can't. I have a feeling he wouldn't tell me anyway."
Chase stopped paddling. "What are you thinking, Ali?"
Ali took a deep breath. "Prom was in April. I was born the next January. From what I've found out so far, my mom wasn't dating anyone in high school. It just seems logical to me that the person who took her to prom is my father."
Chase let out a low whistle. "Wow, that's big. Did you ask my mom?"
Ali nodded. "I just asked her general questions about my mom. She says she doesn't remember all that much though. I have a feeling she wants to stay neutral because of my grandfather."
"Yeah, I'm sure you're right. If Ben knows who your father is, he's probably told my mom, but she'd never tell you." Chase looked over at the dock where Ben was still working on the motor, then back at Ali. In a whisper, he said, "Have you figured out that Ben and my mom are involved?" Chase raised both hands and made quotation marks in the air when he said 'involved'.
Ali nodded, then giggled. "Eww, right? I just figured it out the other day. How long have you known?"
"A while. They think they're hiding it, but they're not doing a very good job of it."
"Does it bother you?" Ali asked. It used to bother her when her mother had a new boyfriend, but her mother never allowed her boyfriends to sleep over or live with them. Ali just hadn't liked sharing her mother with someone else when she was younger.
Chase shrugged. "No. I like Ben, and my mom's been alone for a long time. At least I know Ben is good to her and she'll have someone to take care of her when I leave for college. Well, now she'll have two people because now she'll have you, too."
'Now she'll have you, too.' Ali thought about those words as Chase guided the canoe to shore. It was nice feeling like she was part of a family. It had been just her and her mother for so long, that being part of a bigger family felt good.
"You kids have fun out there?" Ben asked as Chase and Ali walked past the dock after leaving
the canoe on the beach. Chase nodded, but Ali noticed a grin on her grandfather's face. That same grin that he used when he was teasing. She wondered if he'd started that motor on purpose at the exact time Chase was going to kiss her. She wouldn’t put it past the grouchy old man.
***
Ali sat next to Kat on the bench outside of the coffeehouse. Kat was taking a break from work and she and Ali were eating sandwiches and drinking sweet tea. It was afternoon and it was another warm day, perfect for sitting outside. The lunch rush had just subsided at the coffeehouse, and the new girl they'd hired and Kat's mom were finishing up with the last of the customers.
The small town was quiet with only a few people milling around. Two older women were folding towels in the Laundromat at the end of the block. The grocery store had three cars in front of it, and Chet's Hardware store's parking lot was empty. Across the way, music from the jukebox was drifting out into the street from The Loon's Nest, and every now and then someone walked in or out of the bar. Ali thought the town had a lazy, Mayberry feel to it. She wouldn't have been surprised to see Andy and Opie walk by.
"So, did Chase finally kiss you?" Kat asked, grinning at Ali.
Ali rolled her eyes. "What makes you think he wants to?"
"Don't be silly," Kat said, sipping her tea. "I saw the way he looked at you out there on the lake. He looks at you like that all the time, all gooey and lovey dovey. I figured by now you two would be an item."
Ali sighed. "I'm not looking to be an item with anyone. Chase is a really nice guy. And cute, too. But he's leaving in less than a month and I don't want to end up heartbroken."
Kat looked at her seriously. "Chase would never break your heart. He's too nice. If he wasn't serious about you, he wouldn't start anything."
Ali turned and studied Kat's face. "You really mean that, don't you?"
"I know Chase. I've known him since he was five years old. He doesn't take anyone for granted, and he never leads a girl on if he isn't serious about her. And to tell you the truth, I've never seen him look at anyone else the way he looks at you." Kat poked Ali's shoulder. "You're the real deal. He's got it bad for you. And I can tell you have it bad for him, too."
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