“Yes! We decided to keep it up even when we weren’t grounded, and that tree was the letter box. Which was dumb because it took longer to get there—for me, anyway—than it did to canoe to your dad’s.”
Jack was aware that Blair was riveted by their conversation. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel her attention. He had to get his act together.
“There are more fish than I remember.” He walked over to the wall where Ed had mounted the skins of his prize catches.
“Yeah, he started driving up to Mille Lacs for walleye, enteringtournaments there.” She turned to Blair. “No walleye in this lake, mostly just muskies and crappies.”
“I know you’re speaking English and yet… What is walleye?” Blair asked.
“Have you never had walleye?” Allie turned to Jack. “What kind of host are you?”
“I’ll take care of it.” He turned to Blair. “Walleye is a big thing in Minnesota.”
Allie turned back to the trophy wall. “I used to be embarrassed by the fish when I was a teenager.”
Jack didn’t remember that. It was hard to imagine Allie at any age being embarrassed by anything.
“Dad got Brielle into fishing.” Allie swiped around on her phone and came to stand by Jack. “This was from five years ago, when she was seven.”
There was Ed Jensen, looking older but elementally the same. He was wearing a much wider smile than Jack remembered being typical for him, but he supposed that was what a grandchild did to a person. The girl, though… With her white-blond hair in a messy ponytail and her gap-toothed grin, it was like looking at Allie herself at that age, and it caused another onslaught of memory-vertigo.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He forced himself to act like a normal human being as he turned for the couch—same olive-green corduroy that he remembered. He took the phone and sat under pretext of getting a closer look at the photo but really because, like before, he was overcome. He felt like an aggressively corseted Victorian lady in need of smelling salts. “She looks so much like you.”
“Yeah, she’s my little mini-me.” She took the phone back. “I’m going to have to run. You want to see the rest of the place before I go?” Jack made himself get up. He knew now to gird himself against the onslaught of memories. What he didn’t know was why thesememories should be so destabilizing. He’d had some good times here; his memories should be happy, should they not? Or at least milder.
Allie took them through the cabin’s single bedroom. “I didn’t do a reno, but I did switch the bedrooms around. You remember this room used to be my dad’s, and I slept in the loft?”
Jack nodded. Mr. Jensen used to have a big bed in here with a wooden spindled headboard and an old-school white knotted bedspread, but now the room was furnished with two twin beds covered with white comforters with unicorns printed on them.
“Call me a helicopter parent, but I wasn’t cool with Brielle sleeping in the loft alone at night—there’s literally no wall on the one side—so my husband and I sleep up there, and this is her room. We put twin beds in so she can bring a friend when we come, which, as I said, isn’t that often anymore.”
“So we’re not displacing you,” Blair said.
“Not at all. The beds, including the one in the loft, have fresh sheets.” She turned to Jack. “Oh! There’s a washer in the bathroom now! So no more trips to the laundromat in town. But no dryer, so if you want to wash anything, you have to hang it to dry on the clothesline.”
Back in the main area, Allie handed Jack a key and pointed toward the door on the lake side of the house, which was a Dutch door with the top open. “That door still sticks, so you really have to mean it when you want to close it. Just check that it’s locked when you leave for good.”
Jack and Blair followed Allie outside. Blair thanked Allie and Allie deflected. Allie said more nice things about Blair and Blair deflected.
“All right,” Allie said. “Call me if you need me.”
“I’ll let you two say goodbye,” Blair said, and she went back inside.
“Well, look at you,” Allie said.
“What do you mean?”
“Gentleman friend to Blair Kellermoon.”
“That is an incorrect characterization of our relationship.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re not friends, or because you’re not a gentleman?”
