He waves a hand through the air. “She’ll forgive me for sleeping with you. Probably take a day or two.” It’s obvious he’s still working this out in his head.
“She’ll forgive you,” I repeat. I can’t even think. “For sleeping with me.” She’ll forgive him for sleeping with his wife. That makes a lot of sense.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “She’s great. Very forgiving.”
Not like me. I tend to hold a grudge.
“So do you want me to have your boxes delivered to your grandmother’s house?” he asks. He scrubs the end of his nose with a finger.
I tilt my head. “Yeah, Gran’s house will be fine.”
He nods. “I can take care of that.” He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it. “I’m sorry, Abs,” he says.
I jerk my hand free. “My name is Abigail, and if you’d ever listened to me the million times I’ve told you that, you would have stopped calling me Abs by now.”
He takes a step away.
I walk into the bedroom and get my keepsake box from where it rests on the end of the dresser. My grandfather made it and gave it to me when I was five. It has my name engraved in the top. He’d engraved it by hand. I prop it under my arm and walk toward the front door.
“Goodbye, Abs,” Charles says softly.
I don’t even correct him as I walk out the door. Instead, I slam it so hard that the walls rattle and the windows shake. Then I walk out to my car, get in, and gently set the keepsake box next to me on the seat.
I call Gran. “Hey, Gran.”
“Abigail,” she replies. I can hear the smile in her voice, the one she always gives me.
“Do you think it would be okay if I went up to Lake Fisher for a week or two?”
“To the cabin?” she asks.
“If you don’t mind.”
“It’s almost winter,” she reminds me. In late fall, she always closes the cabin at the lake, has it winterized, and lets it sit until spring.
“Gran,” I say, the weight of the day suddenly pressing down on me, “is it okay with you?”
“If you need the cabin, Abigail,” she says, “you can have the cabin. Use it as long as you like. I’ll call the Jacobsons and let them know they should be on the lookout for you.” The Jacobsons own the complex where the cabin is located.
“Just for a week or two.”
“Abigail,” she says softly, “take all the time you need.”
So I start the car and head toward Lake Fisher, which is almost an hour from here. When I get close, I stop at a local tackle shop and buy a few t-shirts branded with Lake Fisher logos, some underwear, and some flannel pajama bottoms. I don’t need much. It’s not like I’m going to be at the cabin for very long. I just need a place to lick my wounds.
3
Ethan
As I cut through the last piece of wood from the fallen tree that had been blocking the dirt road, Jake, the man who owns the campground where I’m employed, motions with a slice of his hand across his neck for me to turn off my saw. I immediately turn it off and lift my foot from atop the tree, where I had been propping for balance. I pull my noise-cancelling ear protection off and let it hang around my neck. I arch my brows at him, without saying anything, as the silence of the day falls like a curtain around us.
One of the many things that I like about Jake is that he doesn’t ask me a lot of questions. He gives me work to do, and then he lets me go and do it. I’ve been here for almost a month, ever since the campground closed down after Labor Day. I’d run into Jake at the tackle shop. He’d heard about the bad turn my life had taken and he’d offered me a job I couldn’t refuse.
I like it here, and I don’t want to do anything to mess it up.
Jake laughs when my little duck runs up and quacks in his direction. “That thing is like an attack dog,” he says.
“Oh, he’s friendly enough,” I reply.