Since then, I have only had a 30% success rate of getting in and out of town without running into someone other than Banjoand getting trapped into breakfast, running an errand, fixing a sink, or getting a cat out of the tree.
Actually getting a cat out of a fucking tree.
The first time it happened, I honestly thought it was a prank or some kind of asinine joke because the town knows I am—was—a firefighter back home, and the stupid motif—or expression, or whatever the hell it is—didn’t escape me. Then, it happened again, and I decided it was because the universe likes to laugh at me—along with Beatrice’s cat.
I almost don’t turn around, but then I hear the voice call my name again—I know it’s Caroline. Lake Tomahawk is small enough to drive through and not even see the odometer go up, and her diner is right next door to her husband’s bait shop.
“I know you hear me, Jacky Boy.” The stupid, childhood nickname makes my fingers clench around the plastic containers of worms at the same time it makes a hairline crack in my annoyance. Technically, I already knew all the locals before coming up here, especially Caroline, but I haven’t spent any time here since the summer I turned 16.
My grandparents were a staple here in Lake Tomahawk, but their cabin has been empty since my grandpa died. Even so, their legacy lines every inch of this town—memories of spending summers here with them, my younger sister, Emerson, and all the town locals are etched into my brain—and Caroline isn’t afraid of my grumpy exterior, not when she met me as a skinny, sunburnt, braces-wearing kid, only a few years before my grandfather passed away.
I turn to face her, futilely accepting that my chances of getting to my boat within the next 35 minutes are gone.
Caroline’s white hair is pulled back in a tight bun with a pencil stuck right through it; her pink, grease-stained apron wrapped tightly around her round waist. She places her handson her hips and looks at me as if she caught me stealing cookies out of the jar she keeps by the register.
“You snuck out with your bait the last two weeks without saying hello to me,” she reprimands, and I almost hang my head in shame like the time she caught me and my sister loosening the caps on the salt shakers in the diner.
“Sorry,” I mumble, but it comes out more like a growl.
“Sorrydoesn’t cut it.” She deepens her voice to mock my half-assed apology, crossing her arms and taking a step toward me. “You can’t be spending all your time holed up in that cabin like your granddaddy did after you kids stopped coming up here.”
My annoyance is immediately replaced with a flood of guilt, along with frustration at what she’s implying. “We didn’t have a choice,” I reply through gritted teeth, not wanting to disrespect the woman who has always been nothing but nice to me, but not liking where this conversation is headed. “You know he wasn’t the same after Grandma Laurie died.” I watch the furrow in her brow turn from one of anger to one of sadness, and it melts some of my anger too.
I don’t miss the similarity between my grandpa and me—both of us using this cabin to isolate ourselves after a loss—but I don’t let myself sit with the thought for long. I know Caroline made the connection within my first week here.
“Jacky Boy,” she starts, her arms uncrossing and reaching out to grab the arm hung at my side, “I’m just worried about you.” I feel the warmth of her touch through the sleeve of my jacket, the touch further settling the tension that seems to never fully release from my body these days. “Ever since Ben?—”
I stiffen at the first syllable of his name. “Don’t,” I interrupt before she can say what I know she wants to, and this time itisa growl. “I’m fine.”
And alive, which is more than I can say about my best friend.
“You’ve said the word ‘fine’ so many times, it doesn’t even sound like a word anymore.”
I shake my head, her words ringing too true and close for comfort. Saying “I’m fine” has become a natural response, and I don’t even know what the fuck it means now that I’m living a life without the person who mattered most to me.
But I’m not up here to sit and dissect my feelings.
I’m here to fish and get some fucking peace and quiet.
Before I can say any of this to her, my phone rings. I almost don’t register the sound, the noise so foreign after a week of it sitting silently on my kitchen table from the lack of service in the woods.
Caroline lets go of my arm, her eyes misty as she reminds me, “As happy as I am to have you back here, you can’t hide up here forever.”
I try not to show how deeply her words cut into me, or how jarring it is to no longer feel the tender touch of another human being after so many months alone. I don’t need her reminding me of a fact I try to keep as far back in my brain as possible.
Grabbing my phone from my back pocket, I give her a curt nod as I jog across the street to my truck, with every intent of leaving this conversation behind me as I go.
I open the driver's side door, set the containers of worms on the center console, and turn to see Caroline walking back into the diner, her head shaking slightly.
Ignoring the pang in my chest and the overwhelming feeling of grief beginning its slow yet familiar descent into me, I turn my phone over in my hand to see who’s calling.
It’s embarrassing to admit that I still feel a sense of hopefulness when checking the caller ID, that somehow it’s a call fromhim; that somehow the doctors got it wrong, that he isn’t gone, and that we didn’t bury him six months ago.
A dry, humorless laugh escapes me when I see Arthur Sander’s name at the top of my screen. The irony that I’m up here to catch a goddamn break from everything at home yet the reminders of both why I came and what’s waiting for me back there punching me right in the face this morning.
“Chief,” I say into the phone as a greeting.
The station, the chief of the fire department, and the crew all feel like something from another life—one too good for reality; one so far off and removed from where I am now that it feels like it was all a dream.
