I squint up at her. “The tree?”
“The fallen tree to your left. When you went down, it flew in the other direction and got caught in the branches.” I follow her finger and, sure enough, I see a moss-covered trunk jutting into the side of the lake with a long red kayak half in the water, half hoisted up by one of its branches. “Here. Get in with me. I’ll take you to it.”
She holds my paddle while I grip the side of the boat. “Not like that. Reach your left arm all the way to the opposite side,” she instructs, and I clumsily follow.
I heave myself into the boat, drenched from head to toe, shivering as steady drips of water fall from my head in wet plops. My eyes wander between our chaos and the stillness of the lake, tracking the way we’re drifting through the water, the world moving around us in slow motion.
“I can’t wear white to your wedding now. So that’s settled.”
She laughs, a quick reprieve from our present fight. “You still could.”
“It’s a little translucent now.”
“We’ve all seen your tatas. No modesty left in this group.”
She looks at the tree line like there’s something up there she needs to see. Then, apropos of nothing, she asks, “What are you more afraid of? Petey and I getting divorced or staying together?”
The question slices through me. The familiar refrain I’ve been repeating all weekend,This won’t end well, is right there on the tip of my tongue. But that fear for her wasn’t my immediate feeling when she told me she was proposing. It was loneliness.
“I’m not leaving you behind, Charley. I’m building a life with someone I love.” She wipes her eyes with her wrist, and when she pulls it away she looks devastated…for me. Her anguish on my behalf is written all over her face. “You’re so afraid of becoming our parents, you never became anyone. You never go for things you really want. You never take risks. It honestly makes me sad, Char.”
My voice is quiet, and I can’t even look at her when I say, “I’m taking a risk with Ethan.”
“Are you, though?” she asks.
When she accepts that I’m not going to respond, she wades over to the kayak, and we free it from the tree with our paddles.
“I’m getting married today, Charley. You don’t need to be happy about it, but I’d prefer if you were there. Not because I like you right now, but because you’re my sister, and I love you. Understood?”
I nod.
She juts her chin in the direction of the neighboring boat. “Good. Now get out.”
Once I’m seated, she hands me my paddle with apparent bitterness, which is a difficult emotion to convey with object work alone.
Then, before my paddle has even touched the water, I hear the first bloodcurdling scream.
Chapter 21
Wet Ted’s Name Is Ted Wetter
Monday, Now
“What happened?”
Everyone’s surrounding a body lying on the grass just onshore. I scan the heads one after the other in search of Ethan’s brown hair as Laurel and I drag the kayaks onto the rocks.
Petey answers me with a dazed expression. “Not sure. One second I was talking to E, and the next second Ted was screaming on the ground.”
Relief swarms my chest—it’s not Ethan—but my subsequent thoughts are swallowed up by another of Ted’s raw-throated moans.
“His kayak went missing,” Harlow explains. “He was looking for it and then…” She gestures to the ground in front of her.
My stomach drops. I feel Laurel’s eyes at the side of my face.
“Is it bad?” Ted cries out to the surrounding bodies. “I don’t want to look. Just tell me how bad it is!”
I break into the circle to find Ted, shirtless and curled into a rigid ball with Ethan kneeling beside him. I reach to patTed’s shoulder but retreat guiltily. “I’m so sorry. I borrowed your kayak.” Everyone ignores my confession in favor of caring for the man who’s on the ground, wailing in agony.
