The Little Cabin Across the Lake

On Monday, Cooper brought his fishing pole and a bobber and caught three sunfish and a rock bass off the end of my dock.

He was so proud he made me take a picture of each one before he let it go.

On Monday afternoon, Jean’s husband, a quiet man named Walt with forearms like fence posts, came down and showed Cooper how to take a hook out of a fish’s lip without tearing it. Cooper hung on every word.

On Tuesday, Max came over too, riding in the middle of the canoe on his daddy’s lap, because Nate paddled that trip himself with the big kids in a borrowed kayak alongside. Max was wearing a life jacket shaped like a shark.

“Gamma,” he said, holding up his arms to me from the canoe. He has never been able to say his r’s. “Gamma, I came on the boat.”

“You surely did,” I said, and lifted him out, and he smelled like sunscreen and lake water and little boy, which is the best smell God ever made.

Nate stayed that morning and ate six pancakes and drank three cups of coffee on my porch.

He told me about the storm job, the poles snapped off like matchsticks, the old farmer who brought the crew sandwiches at two in the morning.

He did not say anything about Ashley, and I did not ask.

Some mornings a man needs to sit on a porch with his mother and talk about broken poles. I let him.

On Tuesday, Addie finished the first library book I had brought her and started the second.

She lay on her stomach on the dock with her chin in her hands and her feet in the air, reading out loud to the minnows.

I sat on the bench behind her and let the sun soak into my shoulders. Across the bay, the big house sat quiet.

I saw Ashley on the deck a few times, a small figure in a ball cap. Once she was looking our way.

Wednesday night was supper. I had been told Wednesday, so I went on Wednesday.

I drove around the lake at five thirty in my Buick with what was left of the cherry pie and a fresh bag of sweet corn from a farm stand.

The house was even bigger close up. A three-car garage, a stone fireplace, a kitchen island the size of my whole cabin.

I stood in the doorway and saw the downstairs bedroom right off the kitchen, door half open.

The quilt was on the bed. The window was right where the picture had shown it, looking straight out at the water.

There was a box of tissues on the nightstand and a woman’s cardigan folded on the chair.

Ashley met me at the door. She took the pie and the corn and said, “Oh, you didn’t have to,” and then, “Come in, come in,” and then she found something to do at the stove and did not turn around again for a long while.

Diane was at the table. She stood up when I came in, the way women our age were raised to do, and she shook my hand.

Her hand was cold, and she had lost weight since the last time I saw her.