Every Pontoon on the Cove Flew One

She shook her head. “I wasn’t. I was doing it for me.”

I did not say anything. I let her say the rest.

“I’ve known since about one minute after,” she said. “I saw Drew’s face. I saw Carter’s. I went home and threw up. And then I was too proud to walk down this dock and tell you, and every day I didn’t, it got harder, and then it was winter.”

She looked at me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the flag and for Drew and for the picture. I’m sorry I made you go home.”

“I know you are,” I said.

“Carter hasn’t let it go either. He’s been decent, but he hasn’t let it go.” She turned the pole over in her hands. “I deserve that.”

I told her that she did deserve some of it. I told her she had hurt my son on the one day he had asked me for all year, and that I had stood at the rail of my boat in front of everyone with my husband’s flag folded against my chest.

I did not raise my voice. I just wanted her to hear it once from me.

Then I told her that I was not going to spend the rest of my life on that cove at war with my husband’s brother’s wife.

I told her Brady would have hated it. Brady liked Willa. He used to say she was the only one in the family who could beat him at euchre.

She laughed then, a real one, wet and surprised. “He cheated,” she said.

“He did,” I said. “Every time.”

The Ask

She said she would fly the flag. Then she said one more thing I did not expect. She said she did not want to lead the parade alone.

She wanted me beside her. Not behind, not in the line somewhere. Beside her, two boats abreast at the front, the way they do at the lake fireworks when the sheriff’s boats lead out.

“Your boat flies Brady’s,” she said. “The real one. Mine flies this one. And we go out first together. If you’ll do it.”

I said I would think about it, and I did, for about as long as it took me to walk back up her dock.

Then I turned around at the shore and called back down to her that I would.

That night I told Drew. I was ready for him to be angry. He sat on the dock with his feet in the water and thought about it the way his father used to think about a thing, slow, with his chin on his knees.

Then he said, “Can I ride with Aunt Willa?”

I asked him why. He said, “Because if Dad’s flag is on our boat, then Dad’s riding with you. And somebody ought to ride with her.”

I had to get up and go fiddle with a dock line so he would not see my face.