Chapter 21 Wet Ted’s Name Is Ted Wetter
Wet Ted’s Name Is Ted Wetter
Monday, Now
“What happened?”
Everyone’s surrounding a body lying on the grass just onshore. I scan the heads one after the other in search of Ethan’s brown hair as Laurel and I drag the kayaks onto the rocks.
Petey answers me with a dazed expression. “Not sure. One second I was talking to E, and the next second Ted was screaming on the ground.”
Relief swarms my chest—it’s not Ethan—but my subsequent thoughts are swallowed up by another of Ted’s raw-throated moans.
“His kayak went missing,” Harlow explains. “He was looking for it and then…” She gestures to the ground in front of her.
My stomach drops. I feel Laurel’s eyes at the side of my face.
“Is it bad?” Ted cries out to the surrounding bodies. “I don’t want to look. Just tell me how bad it is!”
I break into the circle to find Ted, shirtless and curled into a rigid ball with Ethan kneeling beside him. I reach to pat Ted’s shoulder but retreat guiltily. “I’m so sorry. I borrowed your kayak.” Everyone ignores my confession in favor of caring for the man who’s on the ground, wailing in agony.
“It’ll be fine, brother,” Petey tells him. “We just have to get it off. Then you’ll be good.”
Laurel gasps. “Holy shit! Is that a bear trap?”
My eyes follow his leg all the way down to the red mangled mess of swollen foot and hiking sandal that’s clamped between two metal jaws.
“Bear traps are illegal,” Ethan informs Laurel. “Especially in parks.”
“Well, it’s here and crushing his foot, so—”
“ Crushing? I can’t look!” Ted whimpers, his head tilted skyward. Harlow hisses sympathetically as Russell gags over Ted’s rapidly purpling foot.
I shake my head. “It’s not a bear trap. It’s a Payne small-animal grip trap. See, there’s no teeth and the spring is still engaged to maintain gentle tension,” I say, explaining the metal contraption.
“Gentle, my ahh—” Ted’s wail interrupts his comeback.
“Why do you know that?” Laurel asks me.
“They’re one of our clients. I wrote the patent appeal brief.”
“Ted, I’m sure it’s only broken,” Petey says with what I’m assuming is the intention of comforting him, but based on Ted’s face, it isn’t the reassurance he’s seeking.
Still, Petey forges ahead. “You’ll be fine.
I’ve broken my wrist twice, and if I can handle it, you can handle it. You’re Ted freakin’ Wetter!”
“Wait…,” Laurel interrupts. “Wet Ted’s name is Ted Wetter ? Did anyone else know this?” Everyone, apart from Ted—who’s still writhing on the ground—shoots her a look. She puts her hands up. “Not the time. Got it.”
Petey’s giant paws clumsily examine the trap. “Ted, buddy, I’m gonna tug your foot out slowly—”
“No.” I stop him. “He’ll lose a toe that way.”
At the mention of toes, Russell retches, and Ethan tugs me down to foot level beside him. “Do you know how to disengage it?” he asks.
I nod. I know absolutely everything there is to know about the mechanisms of small-animal traps, and for the briefest moment, I’m grateful that Bob Champion has never done a single day of work in his life.
“Ethan, hold his foot still,” I instruct. “We need to pinch this and pull the pin at the same time, and it should…”
The trap springs open, and Ted unleashes a scream that shudders the surrounding trees and shakes loose a flurry of squawking birds. If there are any campers within earshot, they are surely taking cover.
“Don’t worry, Ted. It doesn’t look so bad,” Harlow says sweetly, but somehow, the foot looks even more malformed when free of the metal clamp.
She turns to face the rest of us. “Russell and I will take him to the hospital for an X-ray and some pain meds. Can you guys pack up my stuff and leave it at Ted’s? ”
“Of course,” Ethan assures her.
Ethan and Laurel grab Harlow’s green canoe. Meanwhile, Russell helps Ted get comfortable.
“We should take my kayak,” Ted directs. He’s calmer but still noticeably pained and gripping his crimson-hued foot. “It’s bigger. Charley, can you—?”
“That might not be possible,” Laurel tells him on my behalf as she hands Harlow her paddles.
“It’s a bit banged up. It’s actually a really funny story,” I explain, unable to meet his eyes. “So, it found its way into a tree…”
Ted’s mouth drops open.
Laurel grabs the stern. “We handled it, Wetter. Don’t you worry about a thing.” She gives the canoe a double tap before sending it into the water with a shove. “See you on the other side, buddy.”
“I don’t think I’ll be giving you your security deposit back,” Ted calls out. “Any of you!”
And because that seems more than fair, Petey, Ethan, Laurel, and I wave apologetically as they float away.
And then there were four.
···
It takes us a few hours to pack that crowded little patch of ground into nothing but memories.
Ethan scours the campsite about twelve times in search of plastic wrappers and other trash.
When he’s satisfied, we drop our equipment off with Ted Wetter’s teen associate and sit on the ground against the side of the building without a word.
“Well, you won, Charley,” Laurel says, breaking the silence that settled onto our foursome. “I’m not getting married today.”
Petey rubs her shoulder, ever the cheerleader. “Babe, we can still—”
Her smile is wild and wrong, a breath away from a worn-out sob. “I have no interest in memorializing this day. Charley made sure of that.”
“This isn’t…” I trail off. She’s not interested in the nuances of my wedding objection or that I wanted her to be the one to call it off, not rabbit traps or trench foot. Still, she wants to be mad at me, and right now, all I want is for Laurel to have everything she wants.
I press my forehead into my knees as shame swirls in my gut. “I’m so sorry, Laur.”
“I know you are.” Then she pulls herself up from the ground and walks in the direction of her Chevy Bolt. I start after her, but Petey stops me with a gentle touch on my shoulder.
He gives me a quick head shake. “Not right now, Charles in Charge. It’ll be okay, but…give her a little time.”
He’s so unjustifiably generous to me that I’m…
annoyed. How dare this man be nice right now?
How dare he care more about Laurel than his own, lightly battered, ego?
It makes me look like such an ass. Which I undeniably am, because he’s right .
It kills me that he’s right. It’s more evidence that I might be wrong about everything else.
What if Petey and Laurel are good together and I’ve ruined everything?
I know I didn’t give Jonah trench foot or shove Ted into an illegal animal trap, but I brought spectacularly bad energy with me this weekend.
I came here to ruin everything, and then everything was ruined. That’ll be what we all remember.
The blood drains from my face, my fingertips, my belly, and out through my toes like air seeping from a hole in a raft. I’m emptied out and replaced with the certainty of one undeniable fact: It doesn’t matter if, for the time being, my sister’s name is still Laurel Beekman. I’ve already lost her.
···
They drive away first, then Ethan and I follow.
I release a heavy sigh of whatever the opposite of relief is. “I didn’t want… that , you know?”
He pulls onto the main road. “Do you know what you did want?”
I sink into the passenger seat. “No.”
“I think that might’ve been the problem.”
I nod. Isn’t wanting time to stop reason enough for a “speak now” wedding moment between sisters? But I know the answer is no. I’m the bad guy here. There’s no way around it.
A heavy silence descends on the van. It snakes around my neck, tightening with each passing second. We drive and drive, until suddenly he pulls off.
“Pie?” he blurts into the quiet. The single syllable catches me so off guard, I actually jump.
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think we can go any farther until we eat pie.”
“Pie.” The word comes out slow, like I might not be familiar with it semantically.
He nods. The sunshine glows against his cheeks. “These seem like pie problems.”
“Pie problems.”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say or are you going to join me at the only pie stand on Lake Superior that makes a gluten-free crust?”
So then we eat pie. And we feed each other pie. And we kiss, and we laugh, and we act as though we’re living a completely different day than the one I ruined this morning. We behave as we would were we driving to something rather than away . We ignore the reality of the situation and play pretend.
Every kiss on my knuckles, every swipe of his hair, is paired with an unspoken just one last time .
We both know this is over, but neither of us is willing to acknowledge it out loud yet.
Our relationship is a dog having its perfect last day on earth, and Ethan and I are somehow both the owner who knows they’re headed to the vet and the unwitting basset hound with a heart defect who assumes this is just one of many more pup cones to come.
Winding roads turn to freeways and wooded landscapes to open fields. I enter a state of highway hypnosis and let the world whoosh past until we’re finally parked in my driveway, where it all began.
“Harlow put us all in a group chat.” Ethan’s reading off his phone as I dequarantine my garbage bags of hazardous waste from the back storage. “Looks like Ted’s doing fine. No broken bones.”
“How is that possible?” I ask, heaving my weekender bag over my shoulder. It’s looking a bit worse for wear. “Two of his toes were going the wrong way.”
“Dunno.” He shrugs. “He told me he’s a retired ballet dancer, so maybe that’s just his feet.”
“Ted Wetter is a fascinating creature.”
I head for my front door. Ethan goes to follow, then falters. In this game of reality chicken, it’s the ultimate flinch. Any questions I had as to whether he thought this could go on fall away.