Fireworks From My Half of the Dock

“Every holiday, I’m the aunt,” she said. “I’m the one who brings the gifts and plays the games and goes home to a quiet house. And I love it. I love your kids so much it scares me. But New Year’s at Daddy’s was the one night I thought I could be the hostess. The one night it could be my house.”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her fingers were white with cold.

“I said adults only before I even thought about it,” she said. “I was on the phone with Hal’s sister planning the menu and she said, oh, a real grown-up party, how fancy, and I said yes, adults only, and then I had to tell you. And as soon as I said it to you, I knew it was wrong. And I was too proud to call you back.”

“You made up the bunks,” I said.

She laughed, a little wet laugh. “I made up the bunks,” she said. “Last night. Before you even said you were coming. Because I knew you would. You always come. You and Daddy. You always just show up and do the thing.”

I took off my glove and put my hand out over the middle board. She looked at it for a second. Then she took off her own glove and took it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Missy. To you, and to them. It was Daddy’s night. It was always Daddy’s night. I should never have tried to make it mine.”

“It’s yours too,” I said. “That’s the whole point. Half and half. He said so twice.”

Behind us, Uncle Ken had his phone out. He was watching the clock. “One minute,” he called out, in that voice that sounds so much like Daddy’s. “One minute, everybody. Somebody light something.”

Rachel and I looked at each other. Then she laughed, really laughed, for the first time that night, and knelt down on the dock next to me in her sequined sweater and Hal’s barn boots.

I handed her the last fountain from the sack. She set it on the middle board.

“Daddy won’t mind,” she said. “Just this once.”

Uncle Ken started counting down from ten, and everybody joined in, the whole family on the shore and in the lawn chairs and along the dock, all of us shouting numbers into the cold. Hailey and Jack stood right behind us, one at each of our shoulders.

At zero, Rachel and I lit the fountain together, two hands on one lighter. It went up over the middle board in a roar of sparks, the brightest one of the night.

Everybody cheered. Across the lake, somebody else’s fireworks went up over the pines, and somebody’s truck horn went off, and Jack screamed happy New Year at the top of his lungs.

And Rachel put her arm around me, and I put mine around her, and we stood there in the light of it.

When it was over and everybody started back up the path, Rachel bent down to Hailey and Jack and asked them something I did not expect.

“Would you two stay over tonight?” she said. “Upstairs. In the big room. And in the morning, would you help me make Grandpa’s pancakes? I can’t do it alone. I need somebody who knows how he did the flip.”

Jack said yes before she finished the sentence. Hailey looked at me first. I nodded. Then Hailey looked back at her aunt and said yes, very seriously, like she was signing something.