Page 7 of What You Never Knew

Jim claps his hands enthusiastically. “And so a boat you shall have, me lady.” He takes the handle of my suitcase and starts toward the marina office. “We’ll just put your items behind the desk. You go grab a coffee and one of Ms. Jelly’s famous cinnamon buns, and we’ll have your boat ready in no time.”

He glances behind him to make sure I’m following. “And don’t forget to buy some supplies if you haven’t already. Especially water.”

I silently thank god for Jim Junior and Jim Senior. I was ready to just climb on any old boat and drive out to the island with nothing but my clothes and a half-empty bottle of whiskey. I’ve never done Avril Island as an adult. Only as a child with a mother who took care of everything.

It might be the best coffee I’ve ever had, or maybe it’s just because for the first time this morning I feel like I’ve got things under control. Sitting at a café table outside Ms. Jelly’s bakery, writing a list of supplies while the boat is being readied—I’m the adult now, and I kind of like it.

And the cinnamon bun is even better than I remember. Or does it just feel that way because the taste is a direct line to my childhood? I can never go back, but I can sample food that transports me, makes my taste buds feel young again.

How different everything feels now as an adult—smaller, less shiny, less hopeful and full of possibility but all the more valuable. The screen door behind me sings each time it opens and closes with a customer. The sound didn’t truly register with me as a child, but as I sit here now, reunited with this setting, it cements me back in a place I loved dearly but took for granted, as the young so often do.

Ms. Jelly’s is on the main street, and everyone coming from the marina has to pass by it. That’s what made it an important landmark in my summer landscape. Along with the Red Engine ice cream booth, which was down by the beach and just up from the marina. It was the boat traffic that May and I cared about back then—boats that brought the other summer kids, whom we met at tennis lessons and sailing.

There were rotating crushes on the boys and superficial friendships with the girls. Age didn’t matter the same way it did during the year at school. We all hung out in one big group, slumming it at the beach with the locals, daring each other to jump off rocky cliffs, racing our parents’ boats. On rainy days we crammed in together under the wooden shelter of the tennis club weaving gimp bracelets to exchange or making circles of sailing rope around one another’s wrists and then burning the ends so they melted together.

At the end of summer we all exchanged mailing addresses with the promise of writing, wishing our summer friends could be our year-round friends, but once those cottages were closed and the leaves began to turn, so did our minds. Summer friends became just a memory, no letters were ever exchanged, but when we were all reunited in July it was as though no time had passed at all. That was the magic of the lake, the spell of summer, the fickleness of youth.

The last summer I spent at Avril Island, I was twelve. The exact age when crushes on boys actually start to mean something and those friendships with girls are crucial to your very existence.

I had a boyfriend. Matthew. He had blond hair and freckles, a killer serve, and his clothes always smelled like the lake air that dried them on his backyard clothesline. He wore Stan Smiths, cutoff cargo shorts, and a wrist full of rope bracelets that I painstakingly burned together just so that I could touch the soft, tanned skin of his arm over and over again. We held hands walking around this very town, sat pressed together on boat rides, and had one fleeting kiss at a sailing club dance.

My phone buzzes on the table in front of me, breaking the spell of memory. It’s Beatrice, asking me where her Rollerblades are. I imagine her sister, Madeline, already wearing her own Rollerblades and helmet, sitting by the front door waiting patiently for Bea to locate hers. They were made in one womb but are from different planets.

I text back a few options and then signal off with a kissy emoji. I hate them—emojis—but it’s their language, so I’ll speak it.

That slight bit of contact opens up a well of longing for them. I wish they were here with me now, enjoying a cinnamon bun and listening to me reminisce about my summers. They wouldn’t even have a point of reference for my experiences up here. The thought makes my heart ache.

Leo and I used to take them on vacation every year—some exotic places, lots of beach houses, a few cabins in the woods—but the locale was ever changing. They never grew summer roots that called them back every year to a second home the way May and I did.

A piercing hate for my mother pushes through my heart like an overgrown thorn. If she hadn’t kept Avril Island a secret, I could have been bringing the girls here all along. They would have made their own memories, built right on top of my own so that together we’d have made a lake lineage. Instead this whole world will feel foreign to them. They were robbed, but fortunately they will never know the value of what could have been. Only I do.

The bitterness turns the coffee rancid with my next sip. I push away from the table, gather my purse, and leave the last bit of cinnamon bun along with a puddle of coffee in the mug.

A very basic grocery store has swallowed the general store that used to be here. There’s a greater selection, but it comes at a high price. I wheel my shrunken shopping cart up and down the narrow aisles, choosing only the necessities. I have no idea what state the place will be in when I get there, so I get lots of canned soup and tuna.

Will I be able to get the water running? Will the refrigerator even work anymore? Will there be hydro? Each question that surfaces erodes my confidence and raises my level of anxiety. The stupidity of this mission slowly dawns on me. If May were here, it would be an adventure. On my own it’s just naïve and lonely.

I turn down an aisle of wine. The sight cheers me just enough to keep me going. I envision sitting on the dock with a nice glass of red, watching the sunset. Who needs food and water and hydro when you’ve got wine and sunsets? If May were here, she’d scold me for my careless attitude. But she’s not, which makes me load three bottles of red and three bottles of white into my cart.

When I arrive back at the marina, my mother’s boat sits bobbing on the soft waves, the sun bouncing off its clean white bow. The turquoise leather interior has remained in perfect condition, no cracking, no staining or mold. I’m amazed at how well it’s been preserved.

When I was eleven, my mother taught first May and then me how to use her boat—a gas-guzzling bathtub of a motorboat, but it was safe and held all of our supplies when we made the trip over to the island. She often sent us into town on our own to pick up milk or bread, cigarettes for her, sometimes even a bottle of wine or two.

May usually drove. She was cautious, slowing right down when other boats approached or waves rolled across the usually calm lake. You’re safer with your older sister than me, my mother used to say. It was both a compliment of my sister’s abilities and an insult of her restraint. My mother would push the throttle to full speed, bouncing over waves, racing against all other boats in the vicinity. I never needed my mother to tell me I was safest with May. I’d known it deep in my bones from a very young age.

Parental supervision was lax when we came up to the lake. My father made the drive up from Boston only every other week to spend a three-day weekend, at the most, with us. My mother’s attitude when he was away was We’re all responsible people; you do your thing and don’t cause trouble, and I’ll do mine.

Jim Junior steps out of the office with my suitcase. “She’s all ready for ya.” He stares down at the boat as though he built it himself.

“It looks just like it did the last time I saw it. I mean, it’s amazing. You’ve taken such good care of it.”

The twisted reality of it all hits me for the umpteenth time this morning. Jim and his dad have spent all these years taking care of this boat for us as though it mattered. As though we might be back at any moment, and we had no idea at all. My mother had to die for us to finally learn the truth and find our way back here. My way back here, I mentally correct myself.

Jim helps me load my suitcase and the groceries into the boat and then gives me a quick tutorial on how to operate it. I haven’t driven a boat for years. The few times we rented them on family vacations, Leo always took charge and I just let him. Even when he flooded the engine or nicked the prop on the shallow bottom, I just sat back and let him believe he was the expert.

Jim holds out a card to me. “Here’s my number, if you have any problems. I filled up the gas tank and just put it on your account like always.” I nod and take the card, tucking it into my back pocket. “Take her easy at first till you get used to her throttle.”

I step forward and give him a hug. His body tenses in surprise, but he’s no more surprised than I am. I don’t really do hugs, but words fail me right now. I could never explain to him how much all of this means to me.