The Week in March Nobody Wanted

The call

On Sunday, after Bobby’s group left, he called me.

“They want to come back,” he said. “Every year. Same week. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve got more people than I’ve got beds, Nicole. Every winter. January through the middle of March. I’d like to book every winter week your family isn’t using. Same rate. I’ll pay the plowing while we’re there, I’ll leave it cleaner than I found it, and I’ll keep an eye on the place the rest of the time. I’m on that lake three days a week anyway.”

I was standing in my kitchen in Duluth with my coat still on.

“I can’t say yes to that,” I said. “It’s not just mine. I have to talk to my brothers.”

“I figured,” Bobby said. “Talk to them. No rush. I’ll hold it until the first of May.”

I hung up and stood there for a long time.

I did not get to talk to my brothers first. The bait shop in Bigfork beat me to it.

Steve called me on Monday night. I could hear his television in the background, and then I couldn’t, because he had walked out of the room.

“Nic,” he said. “Gary at the bait shop says Bobby LaValle had six guys from Iowa staying at Dad’s cabin all last week.”

“That’s right.”

“You rented Dad’s cabin? To strangers?”

“I rented my week,” I said. “I told you in February.”

“You said you had a group coming up.”

“I did have a group coming up.”

Steve was always the one who got loud and then got sorry. Mark got quiet and then got stubborn.

“How much?” he asked.

“Fourteen hundred.”

The silence on the line went on long enough that I checked to see if he had hung up.

“For one week,” Steve said. “In March.”

“For one week in March.”

“Mark is going to have a cow,” he said, and I could tell he was going to call Mark the second I hung up, and he did.

Mark called twenty minutes later. He did not have a cow. He did something worse. He used his calm voice, the one he uses at the county highway department when a contractor has messed something up.

“Nicole,” he said. “I think the three of us need to sit down at the cabin. This weekend. Saturday.”

“All right.”

“Bring whatever paperwork you’ve got.”

“I’ll bring it,” I said.

The table

Scott drove. I sat in the passenger seat with a spiral notebook in my lap and went over the numbers again and again, the way I double count a controlled prescription.

It was March 21st, the Saturday after the third Monday. The fish houses were off the lake. The ice was still thick and gray, and there were tracks on it in every direction from the week before.

Mark’s truck and Steve’s truck were already in the driveway. Steve’s wife, Kelly, had come along. Mark’s wife, Brenda, had stayed home with a cold, which I think Mark was grateful for. The less audience the better, for Mark.

They were sitting at Dad’s table when we came in. Somebody had made coffee. Steve stood up and gave me a hug, an awkward one, the kind you give your sister when you are not sure if you are mad at her.

Mark did not get up.

“Sit down, Nic,” he said.

I sat down across from him. Scott took the chair by the wood stove, a little back from the table, where he could see everybody. He did not say anything. He did not have to. He was there.

“Here is my question,” Mark said. “Whose money is that?”

“Which money?”

“The fourteen hundred. And Steve says Bobby wants every winter week now. So that’s what, ten thousand dollars? More? That cabin belongs to all three of us. You don’t get to rent the whole thing out and pocket it.”

“I haven’t rented the whole thing out,” I said. “I’ve rented one week. My week. The one you gave me.”

“It’s still all three of ours.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is. That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”

Steve looked at Mark. Mark looked at his coffee.

I opened the notebook and turned it around so they could read it, and I slid it across Dad’s table, right over the crack he had filled with epoxy forty years ago.

“Before either of you says another word,” I said, “look at the numbers.”