by Jodi Thomas
Austin felt sure his grandfather’s fishing house had the only widow’s walk in the panhandle. Lying in the grass looking up at it, he could almost see a sailing captain’s wife looking out over the prairie as if she could see the ocean a few thousand miles away. “Proves all Hawk men are crazy,” he mumbled. “No wonder I feel so at home here.”
Austin swore. Now he was talking to himself. What next? All he needed was an imaginary friend and they’d lock him up in the same place they finally locked up his grandfather. All the family said he was crazy, but Austin had always suspected he simply got tired of explaining himself and decided to make up his own reality. When they finally took him to the home, he made them bring a van so there would be room for all his friends.
The old man claimed he loved to fish out on this lake alone, but no one in the family ever remembered eating a single meal of freshly caught fish.
Austin drove out here alone and, after staying a week, he could understand why his grandfather had come. The place had a stillness about it. A place where a man could be happy in the company of his own thoughts. A place where he could think about what he wanted to do next without having to listen to others telling him what he should do.
The Delaneys were the only ones who stayed year-round. After the old man went to the home, Austin’s dad, the only child, used to open it in the summer. Most years they were lucky to get away more than once or twice, but Austin remembered those few weeks as peaceful.
He started coming out alone two years ago when he was home on leave. Somehow, it just felt right. Then, after the fire, doctors wanted to put him in a rehab hospital. Austin packed his duffle bag and walked out. He had two months’ vacation and no one could tell him what to do. He ran all the way to the old sky-blue house and decided he’d mend his broken body and mind here by the water. He’d had all he wanted of people and crowds of strangers. For a while he wanted to walk on the muddy beach and know that any footprints there were his.
Rising off the grass, he walked back into the house, stripping off clothes as he moved upstairs. It was almost sunset and he loved watching the light dance off the water. He always ran in full gear just like he’d been trained to do. By the time he reached the widow’s walk on the third floor, he wore only his briefs. His body felt so light he thought he could almost float off the roof.
The evening sun was there to greet him. The colors of the twilight sky did more for him than any antidepressant ever could. He was alive. He’d made it back and, for a moment, that was all that mattered.
As shadows grew, he heard laughter from across the lake. He couldn’t see them, but he knew the Delaney girls were sitting out by the water. He’d never seen them close up, but he liked the way they laughed as he wondered if he even remembered how.
A light from the cabin near him blinked on. Another person on the lake, he thought, and like the Delaneys, he had no intention of meeting whoever rented the little green house perched close to the water.
