“Little lady, you’re not going to find a soul willing to drive a wrecker through a park without Alf’s go-ahead.” I suppress the increasing temptation to chuck my phone into Lake Superior at the words “little lady” and “Alf.”
According to this driver—and the four other drivers who appeared above him in my Google search results—the scenic, unincorporated community of Rockland Bay lives and dies on the say-so of Alf Knudsen, a septuagenarian who’s unreachable on weekends unless he’s eating breakfast at the diner or watching the Vikings in his regular booth at the Pickled Herring.
After Randy hangs up, I kick pebbles into the water, imagining each rock catapulting directly into Alf’s face. The fantasy is immediately pulverized by an anvil of guilt because Alfis probably a nice old man who loves this beach and wants to protect it from people like me—someone who barreled a mobile home down the lake’s adjacent bike path.
Now that I’ve contacted every tow truck in the surrounding area, I try Laurel, but the call goes straight to her voicemail again.
My thoughts spin like a top on the edge of a table, already starting to fall into an anxiety spiral. What if I can’t find a way out of this? What if I get there too late and she’s already married? When it comes to Petey, Laurel doesn’t know how to protect herself from heartbreak. She dives in headfirst every time and a little piece of her shatters when it falls apart. When this ends, I’m worried it might break her.
For a second, I wish I was still with Rich. Not because I miss him or love him or would even enjoy standing on this beach with him, but had he not left, I might still believe there’s hope for the Beekman women.
Ignorance is bliss.
I stuff my phone in my jean shorts and stare hopelessly into the hypnotic swells of the water.
It’s hard to explain the vastness of Lake Superior to people who’ve never seen it, but whenever I stand on the rocky, imposing shoreline and peer into the unending water, something changes inside me. My molecules rearrange themselves, and for a split second, I’m certain the dark waves will reach onto the shore and yank me under, as though I’m a bird or a boat or a shell. I’m an object that lacks the capacity to think or feel or perseverate on my full inbox and the echo of my living room. I’m just a thing, capable of being swept away.
I close my eyes, focusing only on the way the breeze hits myface and strands of my hair fly into my lip balm. I’m on the edge of the world, and the notion of that almost quiets the anxiety prowling around my mind.
A familiar hand meets my shoulder, and I let myself press against it. “Any luck?” Ethan asks. His mouth drifts to my ear to compete with the deafening crash of waves.
I shake my head. “Tony Soprano has nothing on the way Alf Knudsen has northern Minnesota by the neck. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I could reach Laurel to tell her to hold off the wedding.”
He purses his lips. “They must not have enough reception for a call. Petey read my text, so at least we know thatthey knowwe’re not making it tonight.”
I inhale through my nostrils. “Can this day get worse?”
He takes my hand but doesn’t turn us away from the water. “Do you need to do ‘dark side’ or ‘bright side’?” he asks, reintroducing one of our other old games: the “talk anxious Charley off the ledge” game.
I almost say,She’s already trapped, but even that’s not the “dark side” I’m most afraid of. Breathing in deep, I opt for the thing I can’t always do on my own. “Give me the bright side, Powell.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulder and ushers me from the shore like an adult coaxing a toddler away from a hazard. “So we’re stranded on the side of the road—”
I cut him off with a snort. “You’ve gotten worse at this.”
“I’m ramping up to it,” he huffs, knocking my elbow with his. “So we got stranded—beached, if you will—”
“Hilarious,” I deadpan.
“But that part’s over now. We’re done with the bad part,and now I’ve made dinner, and then we get to fall asleep next to the largest freshwater lake in the world. This isn’t some rinky-dink Lake Lewellen.”
“And I have a lead on Alf’s whereabouts tomorrow morning,” I add, finally feeling the effects of Ethan’s trademark bright side. “On Sundays, he eats waffles at the Grey Duck after church.”
He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “See? Everything’s coming up Beekman. Let’s eat and worry about the rest of it tomorrow.”
I follow him back to the van, pretending that hunger is all I have to worry about.
He’s set up a pole behind the back door, and a single strand of café lights. Behind it are two camping chairs and a tiny propane grill. There are plates—actualmatchingplates with a navy stripe around the rim—filled with some kind of white fish, grilled broccolini, and a creamy rice thing that smells incredible.
“Are those slices of lemon butterflied into the fish?” I ask, pointing at the rest of the charred fish head still nested in a wad of tinfoil atop the grill. Its menacing eyeballs stare back at me.
“Branzino,” he specifies.
I rear back. “You had a whole branzino hanging out in your camper fridge? And is this a risotto?” I lift my plate from one of the two camping chairs and inspect it. “How did you make risotto?”
He sits and shoves a forkful of rice into his face. “The Instant Pot,” he informs me with a full mouth and pink cheeks. “It’s tomato and Parmesan.”
I sit, plopping the plate on my thighs, stunned.
