Kyle asked, “Everybody ready?”
“Aye, aye, cap’n!” June cried as Kyle cast off lines and bustled around the boat doing things Margot didn’t quite understand.
“Everybody got their life vests buckled?”
“Aye!” the girls yelled.
Kyle helped June pull the cord for a small motor that pushed them away from the dock. Margot gripped the edge of the hull and the sailboat shot forward. This boat seemed so much less stable than the pontoon. While this was clearly something the Archer family enjoyed, Margot thought she preferred the room and stability of a pontoon.
Once the boat had cleared the Archers’ little inlet, Kyle cut the engine and pulled a cord that tightened the sail. The boat pitched forward again, diving into a wake. June squealed as the sailboat skimmed across the surface. Even Hazel was grinning like mad. The colors of the other boats, the happy shouts, the sunlight sparkling over the water—what would it have been like to grow up doing this as a family? Would she and Stan have taken boat trips like this on the weekends? Would she have learned how to bait her hook properly from Stan? Or would Linda have hauled her to Atlanta every weekend for museums and ballet?
No, it wasn’t likely, given her parents’ marriage. And she didn’t want to think about that right now. She wanted to focus on feeling good for once. Margot turned her face into the wind and closed her eyes. She was right. This did feel like flying.
“So what brings you to my door on a Saturday so my daughter can kidnap you into a family outing?”
Margot’s jaw fell open, something she remedied immediately when a bug nearly flew into her mouth. She wanted to tell him everything. She had a job interview. She could be leaving town. She wasn’t sure that she’d still be around for the festival and was doing her best to have everything ready so Sara Lee couldn’t derail it all if and when Margot left town.
But she couldn’t. They were on the water and the girls were so happy and Kyle looked so relaxed and content. She couldn’t ruin that. Their family didn’t have enough of these happy moments.
Besides, if he got angry, she didn’t have anywhere to go except over the edge of the boat.
“Oh, I just brought some papers by for you. The finalized list of the kids’ events,” she said as he sat next to her. He kept the guide for the tiller in his hand, holding their path straight across the width of the lake. “So what’s the fairy island?”
“It was Maggie’s favorite island when she was a kid. She used to take a little rowboat out there on sunny afternoons and read under the trees. She said that she felt like the queen of her own fairy kingdom on that island. And the girls get a kick out of looking for fairies while we’re out there.”
“That’s sweet.”
“We do this every year. Um, Maggie’s birthday is this week,” he explained quietly. “It’s hard to explain to the girls sometimes. I mean, they understand in the abstract, I think, but tying it in with the final sail seems to help.”
“And I’ve intruded. I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s nice, having another adult here who understands what I’m trying to do. Maggie’s parents came for a couple of years, but I think it hurt too much. It’s nice having you here. Part of that ‘decompartmentalizing’ thing.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Margot relaxed against the seat, listening to June’s excited chatter. Even with the cooling weather, there were some boats on the water. Margot spotted Duffy on the pontoon, with a group of older gentlemen fully outfitted in the flashiest fishing gear. He waved and grinned so wide she could see it from yards away. Margot and the girls waved back.
Hazel warmed up slowly, enjoying the fact that she had to explain the parts of the sailboat to Margot.
“Jam cleat. Sail ticklers,” Hazel said, pointing to the various parts of the boat. “Gooseneck.”
“You’re making this up,” Margot said, scrunching up her face, making Hazel giggle.
“Kyle, what are those ribbons up on the sail called?”
“Sail ticklers,” Kyle said, grinning at her.
“Told you!” Hazel cried.
“Who comes up with these names?”
“Weirdos,” June told her solemnly.
They traveled the length of the lake before finally entering one of those little pronged inlets. Near the shore were several small islands, barely big enough to support grass and a few trees. The largest was closer to the lake proper and roughly the shape of a kidney. Several scrubby trees shaded the mossy terrain.
Kyle anchored the boat and tethered it to one of the thicker trees. The hull settled easily against the muddy knoll of the island, allowing the passengers to hop off onto land. It was quiet here, away from the engines of the fishing boats and the wind. Scraps of ribbon, some only slightly faded, others bleached bone white by time and sun, hung from the branches overhead.
“Mommy started hanging these up when she was little,” Hazel told her while Kyle unpacked their lunch. “For the fairies. We hang more every year on the last sail.”
“Fairies do like their colorful decorations,” Margot said as Hazel nodded.
“Will you rebraid my hair?” June asked, handing Margot a brush from her backpack. The wind had done a number on June’s braid, leaving her with a halo of flyaways. Margot grimaced. She’d never really braided anyone’s hair but her own, and she wasn’t great at that. Her own hair was so fine, it slipped when she tried to maneuver it. She wasn’t sure her hands would “remember” how to do it from a different angle.
But she dragged the brush through Juniper’s thick sandy hair, careful not to catch her ears. The tangles were insane, but June didn’t whine once as Margot worked through them. She separated the fall of blond into three sections and began twisting them into a simple braid.
“When you don’t live here, do you live in a big city like Daddy came from?”
“Yes,” Margot said, frowning at her uneven braiding and undoing her work to start over. “It wasn’t as big as the city your dad came from, but it’s superior in many ways. Many, many ways.”
Kyle cleared his throat in an exaggerated fashion as he spread an oilcloth on the ground. “Don’t lie to my children.”
Margot smirked at him, but before she could answer, June was firing more questions at her. “Did you ride a subway? Did you go to museums with dinosaur bones? Did you live in a big tall building?”
“Yes. But we called the subway the ‘el train.’ ”
“Do you miss it?”
“I miss some parts of it. I miss things that you can’t get here, like sushi and reliable Internet. But there are things I like about this place.”
“Like what?”
Margot considered her answer as she tied off the passable braid with a hair elastic. “Fireflies. We get fireflies in Chicago, but you can’t always see them because there are too many lights. And Aunt Leslie’s deep-fried things. And my cabin. I like my cabin.”
“And my daddy?”
Margot looked up to find Kyle smirking in return. “Your daddy is something I like, yes.”
“Well, be still my beating heart,” he drawled, pressing a hand over his chest.
“So you’re not going to go back?” Hazel asked, watching Margot’s face carefully. Margot’s lips parted to give an answer, but the breath remained trapped in her throat.
Kyle frowned and tugged gently on Hazel’s ponytail. “Lunch is ready!”
The girls scrambled over to the picnic blanket to chow down on peanut butter and jellies, lemonade, and pink-frosted cupcakes. But Hazel’s unanswered question hung heavily in the air between the adults, turning the too-sweet canned frosting to ashes in Margot’s mouth.
UNNERVED AND EXHAUSTED by the sailing trip with the Archers, Margot pulled the truck to a stop in front of her cabin. The afternoon had been as delicate as a soap bubble, treading the line between respecting Maggie’s memory and making the day a happy occasion for the girls.
When they’d anchored the boat to Kyle’s dock, an older
couple had emerged from the back door, waving. Margot saw the exact moment when the couple spotted her, because their arms froze midair and sort of drooped to their sides.
“Oh,” Kyle said, his eyes cutting toward Margot.
“Meemee and Pawpaw!” June cried, waving her arms.
Margot winced, both at the idea of meeting Kyle’s in-laws and some of the strangest grandparent nicknames she had ever heard. Kyle looked so uncomfortable, he actually turned pale.
Kyle murmured as Margot helped him tie off the line to the dock, “They’re very nice people. It’s going to be fine.”
Margot thought about how she would feel if her daughter had died an unfair and tragic death and she found that daughter’s husband taking up with a stranger just a few years later.
“That seems so unlikely,” Margot told him.
The Kellers did their best to keep pleasant, welcoming expressions on their faces as Margot and Kyle herded the girls up the dock. Vaguely, Margot remembered her Aunt Tootie mentioning Maggie’s father by name—Hank? Henry? Hal! And Rosie. She distinctly remembered Tootie saying that Maggie’s mother was named Rosie.
June leaped at Hal, knocking him back on his heels and nearly sending them both careening into the lake. Margot gasped, expecting Kyle or Hal to reprimand her sharply for acting like that near the water. But Hal just laughed while Rosie leaned in to blow raspberry kisses on Hazel’s cheeks.
Both girls chattered happily about their day on the water, the new ribbons they’d tied on the “fairy trees,” the cupcakes their daddy had made, burned, and remade. Margot approached the older couple with all the apprehension of an apprentice snake charmer.
But Hal reached out and gave her hand a very firm shake. “Hi there, I’m Hal Keller. This here’s my wife, Rosie.”
“Margot Cary,” she said, returning the handshake with the sort of pressure she’d used for meetings with CEOs back in Chicago.
Rosie nodded and Margot gave her a lighter, less squeezy handshake. “Tootie said you’d met the girls.”
“She came sailing with us,” Hazel said. “We took her to the fairy island.”
Rosie’s face took on a speculative expression. “Did ya now? And how’d you like it?”
“It was really lovely,” Margot said carefully but firmly, staring into Rosie’s frank brown eyes. “I feel very fortunate to have been invited to see it.”
Rosie pursed her lips for a long moment and then nodded. “Good.”
With a considerably lighter tone, Rosie grabbed both girls’ hands and said, “I brought a big pot of Brunswick stew and put it on the stove. I figured y’all would be hungry, being out on the water most of the day.” The girls cheered and ran up the steps to the house.
“Rosie’s Brunswick stew is the stuff of local legend,” Hal told Margot.
“Your aunt Tootie’s been trying to get the recipe out of me for years,” Rosie said. “And I’m gonna take it to my grave, just ’cause I love to see the look on her face when she tries to figure out my secret ingredient.”
“That seems fair,” Margot agreed.
“You’re joinin’ us for dinner, aren’t ya?” Rosie asked as the grown-ups walked toward the house.
Margot glanced at Kyle, who said, “Oh, no, she was just on her way home.”
“I was,” Margot assured them. “I shouldn’t have taken the afternoon off. I have work to do.”
“Margot is organizing the Founders’ Festival,” Kyle said quickly. “That’s why she came over this morning. She had festival paperwork.”
“Mm-hmm,” Rosie said, examining Margot closely.
“Well, I better go,” Margot said, practically bolting for her truck, even when June called after her. She couldn’t keep doing this. Kyle had made the boundaries around his family clear, and she needed to respect them. No more dropping by with papers or news. If she had festival business to discuss, she would e-mail him. It was time for her to start her exit strategy from Lake Sackett.
LATER, MARGOT WAS standing in the purpling shadows in front of her cabin, watching the wind play with the tree at the end of the cabin row. The wind had picked up considerably since they’d docked earlier, tossing the branches back and forth and smacking the roof of the dingy yellow-and-green cabin. She began walking toward it.
Arlo, who seemed to think of her as his person ever since they’d conspired to trick an animal control officer, trotted along with her, sniffing her shoes.
She wished she could say that the cabin tugged at her memory, but not one cell in her body recalled it. It was the first place she’d been taken from the hospital. She’d spent her first three years under the damaged green roof, but she didn’t recognize it. Shouldn’t she remember it? She stepped up on the creaky, sun-faded porch.
Arlo seemed to realize that the old cabin was not a place for goofball dogs and slunk away with a pitiful whine.
“Coward!” Margot called after his retreating furry butt. She reached under the empty flowerpot nearest the door, knowing that, as with all the other cabins on the compound, she would find the spare key there. Taking a moment to steady herself, she turned the doorknob and flipped the light switch.
The house hadn’t been abandoned. The tables weren’t dusty. The floors were swept. The kitchen counters were bare. It did look like some sort of museum exhibit to early eighties decor. A cheap imitation–Laura Ashley couch and matching chair took up most of the living room, flanking an oak coffee table. Brass geese waddled across the mantel between framed photos. A reproduction Tiffany lamp glowed in the corner nearest the kitchenette. It was as if Stan had just walked out and never bothered moving the furniture.
She recognized the people in the portraits as much younger versions of her mother and Stan. But it seemed so alien to see the two of them standing with their arms around each other. She stepped forward, spotting a framed photo of Stan with a baby on his lap. His whole body was oriented around that infant, as if he was trying to shield her from the whole world. A happy grin lit his mustachioed face. She wondered for a second who that baby was, until she spotted the bib around her neck. It spelled out MARGOT in bright primary colors.
Too late, she heard heavy boots on the porch. She turned to see Stan in the doorway, frowning at her.
“I saw the light on.” He glanced down at the photo. “What are you doing in here?”
To her surprise, he didn’t sound upset. He sounded . . . nervous, embarrassed, like this house was some secret he was keeping from her.
“Tootie said that I used to live in this house with you and my mother, but I can’t remember anything about it. I thought maybe if I looked around . . .”
Stan carefully placed the photo back on the mantel, running his thumb along the silver-tone frame. “You were so little when your mama left, it’s not a big surprise that you don’t remember.”
“So why don’t you stay here? It’s a perfectly nice house. It has to be more comfortable than sleeping at the funeral home.”
Stan stuffed his hands in his pockets, unable to meet her eyes. “I tried for a while. It was too hard, too quiet. For the first couple of years, I thought maybe if I waited, if I kept it how it was, your mama might come back and see that I waited on her. And then I thought maybe if I kept it the same, you would be more comfortable when you came back. Anyway, I just couldn’t stay like that anymore, and I couldn’t face changing it.
“Your aunt Donna comes by and cleans every once in a while, just to keep the critters at bay. Your room’s down the hall, if you want to take a look.”
Margot glanced down the hall and found that, no, she had seen quite enough of the house for one evening. “No, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t you just move the furniture? Change things up so it didn’t remind you of us?”
Stan jerked his shoulders. “It was easier just to leave it.”
“Why?”
“Because it was.”
“But why?” Margot pressed.
He turned, his expression tense. “Because if I changed it, it was like
admitting that you weren’t ever coming back, even when it was better that you didn’t. I accepted that your mama didn’t want me anymore. We weren’t suited, as much as I hated to admit it. She wanted more from life than I could give her. I don’t know why she ever took up with me. I was young and stupid and drank too much, had nothing to offer her, other than maybe she thought I was gonna get more of a share in the business than I’m entitled to. And she’d always had a hankering for city living—fancy restaurants, the theater, that sort of thing. I thought we could make it work, but deep down, I knew that she might leave. But knowing I would never see you again? That was too much. And I fell even deeper into the bottle. Because that’s what I did then.”
“What? What do you mean it was better if we didn’t come back? Why would you say that?”
“I didn’t deserve you. I didn’t deserve your mama, miserable as we made each other. I wasn’t the type of man who got to go back to a nice house and daughter who loved him at the end of the day. I was a drunk, a sloppy one. Lazy, distant, kind of a jackass sometimes. You wanna know what made her leave? You got sick, just a stupid stomach flu that almost any parents could handle, but I couldn’t, so your mama was left to deal with it. And she got sick herself and she just charged on, because that’s what she did. But then your fever spiked and she needed someone to drive you to the clinic because she was in no shape herself. And I was too damn drunk to get behind the wheel, so she had to ask Bob. She couldn’t even depend on me to drive you somewhere where she would end up doin’ all the parentin’ anyway. She had to ask my brother. And so I came home a few days later and found you gone. And I understood. That love you had for me when you were little? I would have let you down. You would have ended up hating me, and I don’t think I could have lived with that.” He put his hands on her shoulders and cupped her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “At least this way, there was a chance that someday you might come back and I might be cleaned up. Your mama did the right thing, Margot.”
She nodded. She’d spent a lot of years frustrated with her mother, resentful of her mother, but now, she felt sorry for her mother, having to make that choice, to take a daughter away from the father who loved her, knowing that even if it was painful, it was for the best. Linda Cary hadn’t been a nurturing, cuddly mother, but she’d made one loving gesture that counted, even if it left them all feeling destroyed.