Now they have a house full of children, both hers and theirs, and they take care of the upkeep of the vacation compound. Pop Jacobson, the older Jacobson, likes to pretend he’s still in charge, but he really just rides around on his little red golf cart and chases his grandkids from place to place. Occasionally, he dispenses some wisdom but mostly he just does whatever he wants.
To tell the truth, Mr. Jacobson has always scared the pants off me. He has a way of making you feel about an inch tall, and if you cross him, you know it immediately. So I’ve steered as clear of him as I can ever since I arrived to start working.
I lift my noise-cancelling headphones like I’m going to put them back on. “You need anything else?”
Jake shakes his head and turns to leave, but then turns back. “Katie doesn’t like that you’re living in the campground,” he says. He fidgets a little, jamming his hands in his pockets.
“Is that so?” I stand with the headphones pulled open wide over my ears, but I haven’t let them go.
“She wants you to move into one of the cabins, since the nights are getting colder.”
I shake my head. “I’m not cold.”
“Well, you will be soon. It’s supposed to drop into the forties next week.”
I shake my head again. “I’m fine where I’m at,” I reply. Then I let the headphones fall, signaling that I think this conversation is over. He opens his mouth to say something else, but he closes it again and then walks away. He looks back at me over his shoulder once, but he keeps going, thank God.
I finish chopping the tree up, and I load it into the back of my old Ford pickup. It’s a relic but I still love it, mainly because I can take it anywhere and do anything with it without having to worry about messing it up. It belonged to my dad, and my mom gave me the keys the day she picked me up from the detention facility. The truck has more rust on it than metal, and the wheel wells are nearly rusted straight through. But it’s mine, and it’s one of the very few things I now own. I’ll drive it until it dies.
I drive my pickup back to my campsite, with my little duck sitting next to me on the seat, and I unload the wood. The tree I’d cut up fell a few months ago, so I can probably use it for firewood right away. Either way, I stack it neatly next to the fire pit in my camping area, and unzip my tent, reach inside, and plug my phone up to charge. All the campsites have running water and electricity, so I ran a power cord into my tent on day one so I can charge the few electronics I possess.
Jake thinks it’s strange that I prefer living in my tent to living in one of the empty cabins, but I like my life. I like having a place to go home to that’s mine, even if it is a tent. And I like cooking over the open fire every night. I like bathing in the lake in the late evenings when no one is around. I like the solitude of the empty campground. I don’t want to move into one of the cabins where people occasionally still come and go. I prefer to do exactly what I’m doing, at least for now.
I have bills to pay, and the more money I can put toward the things that matter, the better off I’ll be.
I walk to cabin twenty-four, and nostalgia hits me straight in the chest. When I was around thirteen, I used to come here all the time, mainly to see Abigail. She hated to have her name shortened, and she would give anyone a death glare who shortened her name to Abby or, heaven forbid, Abs. On Friday nights when my parents and I would get here and claim our spot in the campground, we’d set up our tents, and then I’d run straight over to Abigail’s. We’d ride around on our bikes, or after dark we’d play Monopoly or Uno under the porch light on her grandmother’s front porch. Occasionally, we went fishing.
Abigail and I weren’t of the same social class. Her family had money, and mine had none. But nobody cared about class when you were at the lake. The campfire warmed your legs exactly the same no matter how much money you had, and the roads all led to the same sections of the lake. Nobody cared that we didn’t have a lot. The lake was special like that.
I let myself into Maimi Marshall’s cabin and look around. I close the door so the duck doesn’t come in, and he sits down on the porch directly outside the door and squawks the whole time I’m in there. The little cabin hasn’t changed, even in the years since I’ve seen it. My family had stopped coming to the lake when I was fifteen, after my dad died, and I lost touch with everyone, including Abigail. I haven’t been back at all, not until a month ago when I pitched my tent and moved into it.
I notice that Mrs. Marshall still has the same old couch, draped with the same old afghan, against the same wall, and the same old refrigerator, which you know is an antique because of its rounded corners, sits in the same corner of the kitchen. I bet if I open the tiny freezer compartment, it’ll still have those metal ice trays you have to run under hot water before you can crack the ice out, the ones with the levers that give your arm a workout every time you want a cold drink.
On one wall, there’s a picture of Abigail and the person I assume is now her husband, since she’s wearing a wedding dress in the picture. I stare at it. He looks like an asshole. But then again, I never did think anyone was good enough for Abigail, even if they were. In fact, I’d gotten into more than one fight over her that she probably didn’t even know about. I reach up and touch the bridge of my nose. Little Robbie Gentry had broken my nose in one such encounter. I’d charged at him like a bull for making Abigail cry, and he’d punched me right in the face.
I turn on the water, flush the toilets, make sure the hot water heater fills up, and make sure everything that is supposed to come on does. When I see that everything is okay, I walk out the front door. The duck is still there, patiently waiting for me, and it follows me off the porch as I leave.
I get almost to the bend in the road when I hear the crunch of tires on gravel, and a small blue sedan comes around the corner. It turns into the drive at number twenty-four, and my heart starts to beat a little faster. It’s stupid, I know. It has been almost twenty years since I’ve seen Abigail. We’re both different people now. And she’s married.
He’s a lucky bastard, whoever he is.
I watch from the bend in the road as Abigail gets out of the car, stretches, and retrieves a few bags of what looks like groceries, which she must have bought at the local tackle shop. Everyone who lives at the lake shops at the tackle shop, if they want to avoid running all the way to town for necessities.
She’s wearing a pair of blue scrubs, like someone might wear at a hospital. I wonder what she does for a living. I smile when I see that her hair is still a riot of curls that bounce around her face. When we were younger, she used to spend hours trying to straighten it so she could look like the other girls. But Abigail wasn’t meant to be like the other girls. She was made to stand out. And stand out she did. And still does, apparently.
Abigail bumps her hip against the car door to close it, and then she walks up the steps and lets herself inside. I watch, thinking that she will certainly have to come out to get her suitcase, but she never does.
“The Marshall girl is here?” a deep voice asks from behind me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I get clammy when I realize Mr. Jacobson has been standing still behind me and I wasn’t even aware of it.
“Looks like it,” I reply.
“You going to go talk to her or just stand here staring like a stalker?” he asks. He pulls a toothpick from his pocket and sticks it in his mouth.
“I wasn’t stalking her,” I protest.
But I realize by the playful glint in the old man’s eye that he’s giving me shit, and he’s enjoying it, too.
“How old is she now?” he asks.
“Around thirty-five, I’d guess.” Because I’m about to turn thirty-six, and her birthday is exactly one month after mine.
“Ancient,” he says.
It does feel ancient, some days. But mostly it just feels like time has marched on and swept me along with it. After seeing Abigail today, it feels almost like I missed a few steps along the way.
“She’s married?”
he asks.
I shrug. “I know she got married. There’s a wedding picture on the wall.”
“Hmm.” He twists the toothpick between his lips.
“I had better get back, see if Jake needs me to do anything else.” I start to walk off.
“You stay away from her, you hear?” he says, his voice harsh, his words clipped with impatience.
I stop. “Beg your pardon?”
“She doesn’t need your brand of trouble,” he tells me. “So I’ll expect you to stay away from her.”
I nod my head. “Yes, sir.”
I can’t put this job in jeopardy by doing anything he doesn’t want me to do. No one else in town would hire me, not after what happened. Jake really did me a favor when he let me come work here.
“I won’t mess it up,” I add.
“See that you don’t.” And then he walks away like he’d never been there.
I stand there for a few more minutes and look at the old Marshall place, silently willing Abigail to both come out and to never come out at the same time. I’m desperate to go say hello to her, and I’m desperate that she not know I’m here at all, all at once.
My life is a mess, and I’d be ashamed if she found out exactly how it got that way. That’s what I know to be true.
So even though Mr. Jacobson has warned me, I make a pledge to myself that I’ll stay away from Abigail used-to-be-Marshall. It’ll be better for everyone that way.
4
Ethan
When it’s almost dark, I grab my shampoo, a cake of soap, and a towel, and I head down to the lake. When I was younger, this was one of the most fun parts of camping. My mom refused to let me go a whole weekend without taking a bath, but she did allow me to take baths in the lake. We’d soap up, swim a while and wash it all off, and then dry off, and we could call ourselves clean.
I’ve been taking a bath in the lake almost every day since I got here, and that was about a month ago. My little duck goes with me, and he paddles around and ducks his head over and over while I get clean. Today is no different, even though I know Abigail is here now. She’s here, and no one else is. The campground looks like a hollowed-out skeleton with all the empty campsites, the closed-up cabins, and no one using the beaches. Occasionally, people come and fish off the dock, but even that is sporadic in the off-season.
I step onto the sand and squish my toes into the fine grains that line the lakebed. Some lakes have bottoms that mush under your toes, but this lake has been used enough that the lake bottom is a fine silt that’s more sand than mud. I squish my toes around in it, and then walk into the lake wearing my bathing suit, carrying my soap and shampoo.
The water is getting cooler, and I can tell that fall is here. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to do this, once it gets too cold to swim. The Jacobsons close the bathhouses once it gets cold enough that the pipes could freeze. By then I’ll have to have a place to stay, somewhere out of the weather, but for now I like the life I have.
I wash my hair, dunking my head to get my hair clean, which is really long right now, longer than it has ever been. It hangs well past my collar and if my mom saw me, she’d give me shit until I cut it. I rub shampoo into the full beard I’ve let grow for years, then I go under the water to wash it all out. The lake is peaceful and calm, and I can’t help but think that this place contributes to my mental health.
My mom was afraid, when I first got here, that I’d have trouble acclimating to the real world. But this place is so far removed from the real world that I’ve had no trouble acclimating at all. It’s only when I go into town to get groceries that I get harsh stares. People know who I am, and they know what I did, and they know where I’ve been and why I was there. That’s when it’s hard, because I know that I’ve already been judged and found guilty.
And guilty is what I am. I know it. They know it. I’m resigned to it.
I finish my bath, swim across the lake and back, and slowly walk out of the water. The night air is cool against my skin, so I dry my hair with my towel and hang it around my shoulders. My duck toddles along behind me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement on the dock, and I realize that Abigail has walked down to the end of the dock, and she’s standing looking out over the water. Those riotous curls that I’ve always loved so much dance in the wind, and she scoops them up in her hand to keep them away from her face. I stand there and watch her. I know better than to go and talk to her. One, I don’t want to lose my position here, and two, I don’t want her to know who I am. I don’t want her to know what I’ve done. I don’t want her to know about my past, because if she finds out, she’ll look at me the way the other people do. She’ll either hate me or pity me, and I don’t know if I could stand either.
Suddenly, she turns and looks in my direction. She goes completely still and stares, and then she lets her curls go to lift her hand and wave in my direction. She doesn’t smile or call my name, because I’m pretty sure she can’t associate the me I am now with the me I used to be. She just lifts her hand and holds it there for a second. I don’t reciprocate. Instead, I pick up my shampoo and walk back to my tent.
I step into the tent, change into some dry athletic pants and a t-shirt, and hang my wet clothes and towel on the little clothesline I strung up between two trees. The Jacobsons have a laundromat on the premises, one of those coin machine things, so I do my laundry when I need to. But my clothesline works just fine for damp towels and swimsuits and such.
My phone rings as soon as I settle back with a book. I stare at the screen. It’s my mom’s number. I watch it until it has rung so many times that it could go to voicemail any second. At the last instant, I accept the call.
It’s not my mom. It’s him.
It’s actually my mom playing hardball. It’s her pulling out the big guns. It’s her way of getting out the bazooka to kill a fly.
A small voice says, “Dad? Are you there?”
I sit in silence, breathing into the phone, afraid to speak.
“Dad?” the little voice says again. I hear the change in his voice when he holds the phone away from his mouth to talk to my mom. “Nobody’s there,” he says. And he sounds disappointed.
What I’m disappointed in is my mom. She knows I’m not ready to make contact yet. I’ve already told her that I can’t do it. I need to fix a few things first.
“Ethan,” my mom barks into the phone. “I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing.”
“Mom,” I reply. “I’m here.”
“I know you’re there, son. Good God, do you think I’m an idiot?”
That’s something no one could ever call my mother. “No, ma’am,” I reply. “I just didn’t expect the call.”
“I’ve been leaving messages all week.”
“I was going to call you back.”
She makes a rude noise into the phone, one that she would have slapped me for if I’d made it in her presence. “Sure, you were.” I hear a rustling on the other end. “Here,” she says, and it sounds like she’s a few feet away from the phone. “He’s there. Say hello,” she prompts.
“Dad?” Mitchell says, his voice quiet.
“Hey,” I reply. My voice cracks, and I have to stop and clear my throat. “How’s it going?”
“Umm, okay, I guess. Nana said I could call.”
“I’m glad you did.” I sit up and cross my legs, my heart racing in my chest. “Did you have a good day?”
He holds the phone away from his mouth and asks my mother, “Did I have a good day?”
I hear her throaty chuckle. “You did. Tell him about going to the zoo with your other grandparents last weekend.”
I freeze. He went somewhere with them? When did she start letting him go with them? And why didn’t she tell me?
He begins a conversation, tells me all about the bears, the lions, the penguins, and the chocolate-covered ants he ate in the snack bar. Apparently, it was insect week at the zoo.
“Your grandmother let
you eat ants?” I ask. I can’t imagine Imogene and Derrick letting him breathe without one hand guiding how he does it, much less allowing him to eat ants.
“I had two. There was a limit.” He yawns into the phone.
“I’m really glad you called,” I say, as my heart starts to slow down to a normal rate.
“You are?” he asks, and the fact that he has to ask makes me hurt deep inside.
“You can call me anytime,” I tell him. I pay for a phone when I don’t even have a house, just so my mother can get ahold of me in case of an emergency.
“You mean that?”
“Anytime,” I repeat, and I mean it in the depths of my soul.
“Will you come and see me soon?”
“Well, I’d like to,” I say. “But—” I’m about to make an excuse about why I can’t, but he cuts me off.
“When do you want to come?”
“Umm…”
My mother’s voice rings out as she takes the phone from him. “Don’t make a promise if you’re not going to keep it,” she warns me. Then she hands the phone back to Mitchell.
“I have a baseball game next weekend. You could come and watch.” His voice is tiny and hopeful.
“I don’t know if I can do that, Mitchell,” I say. I squeeze my eyes shut. I want desperately to see him, but I’m not ready. He’s not ready. Nobody is ready. And the people in the small town where I know he’ll be playing ball are not ready to see me. They’d probably as soon spit on me as look at me.
“Why not?” he asks.
“When is it?”
He asks my mother something and she takes the phone back. “It’s next weekend. You should come.” Her voice is now coaxing and soft. “It’ll be okay,” she says. “I promise.”
“Mom, they don’t want me there,” I protest. I massage my forehead with my fingertips.
“Who cares what they want?” she says with a laugh. Then she gets quiet. “It’s what he wants that matters, and he wants you to come and watch his game. He’s playing first base.”
Feels like Rain (Lake Fisher Book 3) Page 3
