As Waters Gone By Read online

  The woman tossed her head back, laughing. He grinned and nudged her knee.

  Emmalyn couldn’t watch anymore. She lugged the full jug of water to the car, snugging it into its resting place on the floor, and turned the car toward the park exit. A squirrel almost lost its life under her tires, acting like it owned the road.

  Some other day, when the park wasn’t full of reminders, she’d walk the boardwalk and the beach. Not today.

  She pulled behind the nameless cottage—it needed a name—moments before Nick and the truck arrived. Good timing.

  “I brought work lights,” he said. “Kinda dark in there right now.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Did you figure you could use the five gallons Bougie . . . Boozie found me the other day?”

  He continued to unload gear from the truck. “I’ll start with the main living area, so if we have to move to another paint option for the upstairs, no one will notice. But by my calculations, that should be enough, depending on how many coats this takes. I have the sealant primer. And both interior and exterior trim paint.”

  “Great. Mr. Efficiency.”

  He ducked his head as if unused to compliments from anyone but his mother.

  “Is it a little damp yet for me to paint outside? That was quite the soaker.”

  “If it were me, I’d wait. Nothing worse than going through all that effort and not getting the results you want.”

  His words sounded like the fertility clinic complaint department, if they’d had one.

  “I haven’t gotten to it yet, but hoped to remove more of the upper cupboard doors.”

  “That would help,” he said, maneuvering a pail of paint in one hand and a stepladder in the other.

  She unlocked the back door with its key from the key ring. After Nick unburdened himself of the ladder and paint, she reached the key toward him. “Take it. I’ll let myself in through the front door key if I’m here and you’re not.”

  He stared at the key in her palm as if hesitant to take it. She nudged it closer to him.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Ross. For trusting me with this.”

  “Do you intend to make a career out of the mistake you made?”

  He leaned back. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” She turned toward the wall of windows and the double doors facing the lake. A weakness in the clouds let a single shaft of light through.

  Max’s mistake wasn’t a career deal either. It was one misguided night. One horribly misguided night.

  “Do you have kids, Mrs. Ross?”

  Impeccable timing, Nick. “No.” How could it take that much courage just to turn to face him? “Why do you ask?”

  “You’d make a good mom.”

  Were there no safe subjects in the world anymore? No topics that wouldn’t stir the sediment from the bottom of the well of the uncomfortable? “I left some things in the car. Be right back.”

  She moved past him and out the back door. Was it raining again or were the trees dripping? She swiped at her face. No, that was her.

  9

  Within two hours, the place had a new personality. Even the primer coat made a difference. Anywhere Nick’s paintbrush or rollers had tracked looked alive for once.

  “This is good news,” he said, holding an outlet cover in his hands. “There’s plenty of insulation in the walls. Probably installed decades ago for winter hunters.”

  She hadn’t thought about insulation.

  He seemed so pleased with his discovery. “That would have been disappointing for you to find out later if the place wasn’t insulated well.” His finger poised over his phone, he said, “Do you mind if I listen to music while I work? The cords on my earbuds get in the way, though.”

  She stacked another cupboard door against the wall. “Fine.” Would she still think so after the cottage shook with whatever twisted band kids listen to these days?

  He propped his smartphone on a windowsill and hit Play.

  A few measures into the song, Emmalyn asked, “Do you mind turning it a little louder?”

  “No problem. I wasn’t sure you’d be okay with this.”

  “Very okay.” She recognized the worship song as one Bougie’s “church” had sung. She hadn’t heard the words clearly that night. Ringing through her small cottage now, they made at least as much difference as the paint did. They dropped like warm oil on the bare back of her emotions. Everlasting hope/shining in our darkness/prison chains won’t chain us/hope has freed us/freed us/freed us . . .

  The wet slurping of the paint roller, the scrape of ladder legs, and the music created an odd mix. She didn’t mind.

  They ate their sandwiches and soup on the front porch, grateful the steps had dried enough by then. Emmalyn thought she might bring the porch furniture over from Stockton’s before anything else.

  “Have you thought about screening in the porch?” Nick asked between bites.

  “I love the unobstructed view of the lake and the fresh air.” Captivated by it. But that sounded extreme when talking to a young man so recently captured.

  “You won’t like the biting flies. Most people up here have at least one screened porch.”

  “I’ll have to consider that.” She took a long drink of the artesian water. “Do you plan to stick around, in this area, when you get out on your own?”

  “Might. I had plans for college.”

  “Had?” The breeze brought a faint sour scent of another dead dream. “Don’t give up on that idea. What were you intending to study?”

  A pause miles wide spoke of pain or confusion or a hesitance to let his temporary employer into his thoughts. She couldn’t blame him. For years, she’d used the same pauses as fillers in her conversations with those closest to her. She drew in a breath, hoping a safer question would come with it.

  “I’ve been afraid or”—he clinked his spoon around the soup mug’s empty interior—“curious about what I no longer qualify for.”

  Emmalyn waited.

  “With my record.”

  Waited.

  He stopped clinking. “Do they let ex-cons major in Economics, graduate with an MBA, get a business loan?”

  Her stomach tightened. Her mind entertained questions like that in the middle of the night for Max. What would Max do when he’d paid his debt to society? “I don’t know, Nick. You’d like to start your own business someday?”

  He set his mug on the porch railing. “I used to think so.”

  “What kind of business?”

  Forearms draped over his knees, hands hanging, he stared at his feet. “Something like what my uncle did. I’d run it differently, but, yeah. Kayak rentals. Guided tours. Ice cave hikes and cross-country skiing in the winter. The Apostle Islands are incredible.” He shrugged.

  Except for the complications of his jail time and his reputation, the dream didn’t seem shrug-worthy. Under other circumstances, she would have encouraged him to go after it. Maybe she still should.

  It had been a long time since Max would allow a conversation about the future. Early in his incarceration, when they were still talking, if she voiced the words, “When you’re released . . . ” or “When you get out . . . ” he’d change the subject. Was he an older version of the young man sitting on her cottage porch with a rap sheet and a foggy future?

  Nick stood. “Gotta get back to work. Thanks for lunch. I can bring my own from now on.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll . . . bring my own.”

  So. He didn’t like her prying either.

  Prying, Max? You think my wanting to know what happened that night is prying? You’re my husband! We’re supposed to be a team. One flesh and all that.

  She’d regretted her tone the minute she felt it scraping against her own eardrums. He hadn’t answered. Not their finest hour as a married couple.

  When was that? Their finest hour?

  A rogue breeze stirred the sea grass between her and the water’s edge. She thought she heard it say, “It’s yet to c
ome.”

  * * *

  The post office in LaPointe closes for the day at 4:15, as reliably as the ferry. Emmalyn had missed its open hours three days in a row. With Nick entrenched in the painting project and very little she could do on the interior until that was finished, she drove into LaPointe expressly to see if the General Delivery slot held any mail for her, and to rent a post office box.

  The small brass door on Box 57 swung open on her third attempt at the combination. It felt weightier in her hands than she expected. Real brass. With a permanence to it. She was a resident. Officially. Not just a property owner. Six-month box lease? She’d opted for a year.

  Leap of faith.

  In Lexington, she would have shuffled through the stack of mail while she walked, looking for any tidbit more interesting than a political ad or a coupon for cheap Internet. Anything. Not necessarily a letter from a man with an eight-digit number behind his name, but . . .

  A post office the size of an ice cream truck didn’t seem the place to shuffle through disappointment. She waited until she got back in the car. And there it was. Double-whammy. No note from Max, not that she expected it. But a letter from her mother. Another from her sister Tia. And—let’s make it a full house—one from her sister Shawna. All three in one day? People seek counseling for lesser ills than that.

  Her mother’s Palmer Method of cursive—old school and pinched, despite its curves—fit her personality. Tia’s inventive half-cursive/half-printing penmanship evoked a smile. Tia understood Emmalyn better than most, but Tia’s alternating half-empty/half-full outlook exhausted her if they spent much time together. And Shawna. Even Mom called her a “piece of work.” Code for “prepare to shake your head in disbelief at the way that woman thinks.”

  Three letters in one day? They could have called or texted if they’d wanted to reach her. She rifled through the small stack one more time. Nothing from Max. One of these days, she’d have to write and tell him she had to sell the house.

  Eenie, meenie, miney . . . Mother. Emmalyn slid her finger under the scalloped flap of the envelope and extracted a precisely folded note.

  We’re coming and that’s that. What were you thinking, taking off to the ends of the earth as if we don’t matter? Well, we can talk about that when we get there. We’re coming in November. On the eleventh.

  Emmalyn held the note at arm’s length, as if the action would change the contents. She read two more paragraphs of community trivia about which Emmalyn had little interest, followed by her mother’s traditional “Much love, Mom” benediction.

  We? The second letter explained. Her mother and both sisters.

  The eleventh. She had three weeks to make the cottage habitable and patch together the parts of her that were still unhinged. The cottage would be the easier project.

  Shawna’s letter reminded Emmalyn she was allergic to dogs, so “keep that in mind, sweetie.” Good reason to get a dog.

  Tia’s began, “What do you hear from Max these days?” She meant well.

  They were coming. Madeline Island’s first locust invasion.

  And for that attitude, Bougie would have her scrubbing bathroom floors with a toothbrush, if Emmalyn wasn’t careful. Conditions of probation: Embrace the prickly and assume the best. Emmalyn’s family barely registered on the dysfunction scale, compared to others. But since Max’s deep dive, their love felt smothering. Lovingly judgmental.

  She composed a mental text to Max, one she couldn’t send: Mother and sisters coming. Pray for me.

  Before it all fell apart, he probably would have enfolded her from behind if she made a request for prayer. He would have known she was being facetious. Prayer hadn’t been important to either of them. Not until they started trying to have a baby. At a time like this, Max would have read through her whining, burrowed his face in her neck and breathed, “It’ll be okay. I’ll protect you from them.” His whisper would have melted her into his comfort. He’d meant words like that. Back then. She struggled to recapture what that felt like—to be protected, cherished, to have him understand her quirky family, her quirky reactions to them, and love her anyway.

  Her skin shivered from the effort of trying to recall. She’d conditioned herself not to need his reassurance. Almost five touchless years now, plus the season before sentencing. Would she face a lifetime of touchless tomorrows?

  She had to stop doing that, flattening her palm against her everlastingly flat belly, as if pressing her waif nose against the glass of a shop of expensive dolls she couldn’t afford. A child would have made their family complete. Two is a couple waiting to become a family. A family = (1 + 1) + 1 or more.

  Max believed that once, too. Then he started interjecting Ugly Math: A family = 1 + 1. If he meant it to comfort her after another failed attempt, he had to know it didn’t.

  He had to know.

  But then again, he already had a child.

  * * *

  Nick finished the painting on time as promised, including the cupboard faces. The cottage interior transformed from dark gray-brown to soft white, except for the floors, which still needed attention. She’d have to cross the moat to the mainland and rent a power sander, pick up whatever kind of poly coat the refinishing guy recommended, and make a trip to Duluth or Ashland for mattresses and the essentials Mr. Stockton’s mother’s hidden treasures couldn’t supply.

  Emmalyn stood in the pool of light from the kitchen skylight—best idea ever—and looked across the living area to the view through the lakeside windows and windowed double doors. Once the floors were done, the slate would be clean, as if the waves had swept through the cottage and dislodged any bits of staleness, darkness, and washed them out to sea.

  A snap from behind shot through her. She whirled toward the sound, deep in the bowels of the lower cupboards. Another victim of her trap line. If it weren’t for the whole litter box issue, she’d get a cat.

  Apparently the waves hadn’t swept everything away.

  She backed toward the front entrance, choosing to wait until the rodent was “really, most sincerely dead” before emptying the trap and resetting it. Small as the cottage was—in comparison to every home she and Max shared in their nine minus five years together—her footsteps hurt her ears with their hollowness. Who wanted to listen to every footstep? The furniture, pillows, and area rug would help muffle empty echoes. Wouldn’t they?

  Emmalyn rested her hand on the doorknob. Something had been deposited on her front porch. Rather, it sat there. A small white dog so still, Emmalyn had to look closer to ensure it wasn’t a stuffed animal.

  “Friend or foe, buddy?” She opened the door a crack. “Where did you come from?”

  One ear twitched.

  She crouched to make herself less threatening. She must have read that tip online. “Who do you belong to?”

  Long lashes blinked, dislodging some of the mop of hair that hung in front of the dog’s dark eyes.

  “You’re not coming in, just so you know.”

  The mop opened its mouth in a canine version of a grin.

  “Seriously.” Emmalyn slipped onto the porch and shut the door behind her, not locking it in case she needed a quick escape from a ferocious five-pound puddle of fluff. She bent with the back of her hand extended toward the animal. “Hi, little one.” She kept her voice medium pitched and light. “Can I see if you have a collar?”

  Emmalyn scratched the dog behind its ears while she felt for a collar. Nothing. It remained motionless. Such soft fur. Cockashon? Part cocker spaniel, part bichon? Wasn’t that the breed Tia drooled over? The patch of caramel brown on its face framed an expression an artist or photographer would have found enchanting. Emmalyn would have, too, if she’d wanted a dog. Which she didn’t.

  She scanned up and down the beach. No tourists. No islanders. No obvious owners. The dog didn’t appear to be traumatized in any way. But neither did it move.

  “What’s your name?” Emmalyn asked. Weren’t all questions directed to dogs rhetorical? Wasn’t t
hat question rhetorical, too? She sank to the steps and called, “Come.” The dog trotted over on short legs and climbed into Emmalyn’s lap, lifting its face as if to say, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Emmalyn reached into the outside pocket of her canvas totebag and withdrew the paper-wrapped leftovers from her lunch. Until she got a garbage can with a lock-down lid, she wasn’t leaving any food scraps at the cottage. Bears and raccoons didn’t need any help being annoying. The dog sniffed at the crust of bread, then snatched it politely. A dainty eater?

  When finished, the dog rearranged itself, crawling upward to lay its head on Emmalyn’s shoulder. With a sigh, it settled into immobility again. Breathing in and out. Content to be there. With her.

  “I need a cat, not a dog,” she whispered, mildly concerned about offending the creature.

  It nuzzled into her neck.

  “You can’t make me like you.” She stroked the silky fluff of fur on its back, felt the warmth of its body under her hand and against her chest. “You have to go home. And I have a pathologically hard time saying good-bye to things I love. So . . . ”

  How many minutes did they sit like that, with the shadows deepening and the water gentling to its dusk pace?

  The voice in her head said, “You, animal, are not what I need.”

  Contrary to popular opinion, dogs must not read minds. This one ignored Emmalyn’s internal thoughts. It slept like a newborn, limp against her shoulder, dependent on Emmalyn to keep it from falling.

  Didn’t it realize her parenting history made it more likely it would fall?

  I don’t have time for this. Core-deep, a thick warmth spread through her. Karo-syrup thick. Maybe she had a little time.

  A flock of seabirds too far from shore to identify circled, dipped, fluttered. They lifted from the surface of the water in a frenzy of sunset-flecked wings and caw-noise. Their flock formed an ever-changing shape against the backdrop of sky. Rising, dropping toward the water, morphing into another dance form and rising again. She watched until they leaped offstage, to waters beyond her view. Waters gone by.