Her feet landed on the sandy bottom. It must be about six feet deep here, she estimated. Hope used her hands to stay submerged for a few seconds. She was weightless.
She’d done this before. She used to do it all the time. She also used to do somersaults in the water, over and over. She couldn’t even pinpoint the last time she went swimming.
Why had she stopped?
She saw Archie’s eyes wandering to the younger women at the beach, the last time they tried to go on vacation.
She’d let his assessment of her beach body ruin her enjoyment of swimming. Or was that an excuse? Was she blaming him for her own self-doubt?
Whatever, she sluiced off thoughts of Archie like the water sluiced off her skin.
Hope kicked off the bottom and turned a somersault in the water.
There was no gravity. She could imagine herself as a gymnast or superhero. She could bend the air.
At one point, five somersaults in a row was her record. The tipsy feeling in her head kept her at one this time.
She swam to the surface. She turned over and floated, her face in the sunlight, her body floating on the surface.
It was a gorgeous feeling, swimming before lunch. Not worrying about her stupid stretch marks. She reached out her arms behind her and did a backstroke to swim out farther. Her shoulders released something, tension. Anger?
She concentrated on the strokes, on stretching her arms behind her. She was as fluid as she could be. She moved her body with intention. It was rusty, this motion. But it was still there. Her muscles and tendons remembered what to do. Her body was older, but her heart, it knew the beat, her breath, found a rhythm with her arms and legs. A rhythm she’d forgotten about but was always there, at the lake, in the water.
Hope paused and put her body upright in the lake. She turned to face the cottage.
She treaded water for a moment so she could see the little cottage from her new vantage point.
It was so cute. The windows on the lakeside were trimmed in white. There was a little porch where she could envision a table and chairs. She spied an old-fashioned red kettle-style charcoal grill. Her mind went instantly to what she could make on it. Maybe as a thank you to Libby, she’d make her friend dinner.
And then the idea struck her. She was going fishing right now.
“I hope I didn’t traumatize you too much with my backstroke, fishies, but it’s about to get worse.”
Hope kicked her legs. She sliced through the water with her favorite crawl stroke. Her arms were strong, thanks to her work in the kitchen.
She hoisted herself out of the water, grabbed her towel, and set out to find what she needed.
It wasn’t thirty minutes later that she had a rod in hand and fishing line in Lake Manitou.
It was the one thing she and her dad had in common, fishing. It made her a little sad to think that he wasn’t here anymore. While her relationship with her mother was fraught, her dad’s main crime was passivity.
None of it mattered now. He’d left her with a love of fishing, something she hadn’t done in ages and ages. And darn it if she wasn’t going to catch something and make something special for Libby and J.J.
It was an all-afternoon affair, but in the end, she wound up with five blue gill and a yellow perch. She knew she’d be sunburned, but it didn’t matter. She knew there were largemouth bass to be had, crappie probably too, but she didn’t snare any of those beauties. But maybe tomorrow?
She’d spent the day fishing with no other care in the world. How had she not ever taken her own girls fishing?
She could blame Archie—he didn’t like it—but it was her own fault. She should have taught them how to bait a hook, how to be patient, and how to recognize the local fish. She’d done none of it. There was more than just Archie to blame when it came to her regrets.
“I bet you regret swimming here, little fishes.” Hope smiled as she gathered her bucket of fish.
She found a Styrofoam cooler in the little shed next to the cottage where she’d located the fishing gear. She deposited her catch, and all regrets of how she could have done better as a mother, or wife, were replaced for the moment with ideas on how best to cook this for dinner.
Hope showered off and hung her makeshift bathing suit, bra and underwear, on an old clothesline strung between two trees in the back. She was certain hundreds of beach towels and swimsuits had air dried over the years in this very spot.
She’d have to make a run to the grocery store if she was going to create the dish she wanted for Libby and J.J.
Did she remember how to get to town?
