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She turned down the music on her earbuds and scowled at me for the intrusion. “What?”
“Nothing. I just love you.”
Isabelle shrugged and adjusted her seat belt as she looked outside the passenger window.
“This should be a fun summer,” I tried again.
She put her phone down. “For whom?”
My stomach knotted, and I let out a deep breath.
Since when did she start saying whom?
Never in a million years did I expect my little Isabelle to turn into the teenager of all teenagers. But the moment she’d turned thirteen and three-quarters, we’d become her nuisance.
We.
I kept in the silent tears and reminded myself that I was no longer part of awewith the love of my life by my side.
I was anIwho was super single, supremely alone, and utterly confused. I needed answers. I needed time away.
A few days back, I found myself having a conversation with a squirrel in the park close to home. He looked like he’d lend anear as long as he had an acorn in hand, and I needed someone to talk to. It was right after the school called about Isabelle again, and I went for a walk. Once I’d waited for the squirrel’s response, that was when I realized I needed time away. His little, beady eyes met mine, and it was like he was letting me know this relationship needed to end.
Even the squirrel was letting me down gently. He even left a seed pod as a parting gift.
No doubt about it. I needed Buttercup Lake and the answers it might hold.
It had been sixteen months since Tim had passed away, and every single day, it felt like I relived the moment he fell to the turf and left us. He was playing soccer with his buddies, and it happened in a flash.
I’d been trying to pick up the pieces ever since, but it wasn’t until I got that last call from Isabelle’s school that I knew I needed to change our lives for the better. They told me she wasn’t allowed to attend the school fair celebrating the last day of school, and I told them she didn’t want to go anyway.
A completely mature response on my end.
But once I hung up the phone, I knew the only things that could possibly provide that solace I so desperately craved were Grandma Millie and Northern Wisconsin.
I’d spent countless summers riding my turquoise bike to the candy store, the dairy, and the ice cream shop, all sacred places before I’d hit the lake. To end the summer, I attended CampButtercup. The lake was the one place that offered freedom no matter what was happening at home, and in my childhood, there was always something happening.
“Mom, watch out,” Isabelle screamed and dropped her phone as a deer sprang in front of our Jeep.
Making sure no one was behind us, I slammed on the brakes. We slid to a stop as the deer stood in the road and watched us.
The doe’s eyes connected with mine for a brief second before she bounded toward the woods.
“It’s a good thing Great-Grandpa Renny isn’t alive, or we’d be eating Bambi for dinner.” Isabelle picked up her phone.
We traded a mischievous look, and we both started laughing, knowing she was right.
“It’s going to be weird not having him at the house.” Isabelle twisted in her seat to look at me as I started the car forward again. “He always sat at the kitchen table and grumbled about the ways of the world.”
I nodded. “It is, but I know Grandma Millie will be so happy to see you.”
“Hopefully, she doesn’t die while we’re there.”
My heart stopped, and I glanced at my daughter, noticing a fresh glaze of tears surfacing. Izzy had experienced more loss in the last two years than any teen ever should, but that was how life worked sometimes, and I wanted to do everything in my power to show her that she had an incredible life ahead of her.
Yeah. We needed Buttercup Lake.
I spotted the tiny green sign welcoming us to the town of seven hundred and eighty people and let out a silent sigh and wondered why my husband had kept a key in an envelope with a woman’s name scrawled on it along with the name of this town from our past. To say I was surprised to find something like that tucked in the back of his desk drawer was an understatement.
