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“You knew,” she says again, and this time it’s less an accusation and more a condemnation. “How could you?” Her voice is brittle.
I throw up my hands. “He wanted to tell you himself. But he kept putting it off. Then today I told him that either he had to tell you or I would.” I stare at her. “So I’m guessing he did.”
She visibly deflates. “Yes. He did.”
“Are you okay?” I take a step toward her and reach out a hand, and I see her soften like she wants–no, she needs–for me to touch her.
But the door of Aaron’s cabin flies open, and a pair of little twelve-year-old feet stomp out. Sam turns back to where her dad stands in the doorway. All the fight has left him, and he just stands there, ragged and exposed in the doorway.
“I hate you!” Sam screams in his direction. “I hate you!” Her voice gets louder and louder. “I wish you had died in that car that day instead of Mommy!” Then she runs around the corner of the house, grabs one of the bikes, and takes off down the lane, moving as fast as her feet can pedal, tears streaming down her red face so that I’m surprised she can see.
“Fuck,” Aaron breathes and we hear it even where we stand. He hangs his head, resting his forehead against the doorjamb. Then he starts out onto the porch.
“I’ll get her,” Bess calls out suddenly, surprising us both. “Stay there, Aaron. I’ll get her.”
“No, Bess,” he says. “It’s still my job.”
“Well, you suck at it today,” she insists. She walks over and gets a bike for herself, mounts it, and starts off down the lane. Bess hasn’t been on a bike in years, so she wobbles for a moment and then straightens herself out.
I walk over and sit down on Aaron’s top step on his porch. He sits down next to me, resting his elbows on his knees, then drops his face into his hands. “There’s no way to make this any better,” he says.
“Nope,” I agree and shake my head.
“I did the best I could.”
“Yep. You did.”
He raises his head and looks at me. “Are you going to agree with everything I say?”
“Right now, you need it.”
He lets out a watery laugh and says, “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.” I give him a manly pat on the back and sit quietly with him, both of us staring down the lane toward where Sam and Bess have gone.
29
Bess
I’m pretty sure that Sam has no idea where she’s going. She’s pedaling so fast that I can’t keep up with her, but I can clearly see the tracks the bike tires are leaving in the soft sand of the dirt path.
Aaron and I have explored every part of this end of the lake, and I know there’s only one place out here that she could end up. This road ends soon at an old rickety dock that was a relic of the old campground that used to be here. It closed down years ago when the wells went dry, and the Jacobsons moved it to its present location.
They never did demolish the dock, though. They left it there and sometimes the kids use it for making out late at night. When we were younger, Mr. Jacobson had installed posts and a cable to block the road, a lot like the one that leads to the haunted house. But over the years, the posts had rotted out of the ground and he’d never replaced them. The area is now so overgrown that you get chewed to death by bugs just by coming here.
I swat at the mosquitoes that attack the back of my neck as I follow Sam’s tire tracks around the curve. Then I see her bike leaning against one of the broken-down posts that used to hold the cable. “Ouch!” I mutter as a biting fly lands on my arm and takes a bite. I’m going to be one big itching sore by the time I catch up with her.
I find her sitting on the end of the old dock, her feet dangling toward the water. The boards of the dock are dry and brittle, and many of them are cocked at odd angles. She’s going to end up with splinters. But what breaks my heart is how she’s huddled, sobbing softly to herself.
I carefully pick my way down the dock, trying to step on the more stable-looking boards. I sit down next to her and stare out over the water. If the weeds weren’t so overgrown and the bugs so bad on this side of the lake, this area would be as beautiful as the Jacobsons’ lots are. I slap at a bug that lands on my arm again, and I brush the carcass away with my palm. Still I say nothing.
She sits next to me, silently sobbing. I can feel her anguish, and I know that she’s feeling just as bad about what she said as she is about what she learned about her dad. She’s feeling guilty and sad and she doesn’t know how to recover from any of it.
“Did I ever tell you the story about the day you were born?” I finally say to her.
She sniffles and shakes her head, still huddled into herself like she’s making herself as small as she can.
“Your mom never told you?” I try to make my tone as conversational as possible, despite the fact that I know that this conversation will stay with her for the rest of her life.
