Chapter 4
4
Friday, June 27
First Day at the Lake
It’s the last Friday in June, and Southern Ontario is fleeing to the lakes. Traffic is heavy. It’s going to take us well over four hours to get from Toronto to Barry’s Bay, a blink-and-you-miss-it town on the north end of Kamaniskeg Lake.
Nan has been quiet since I turned off the 401 and began heading north. With the city, suburbs, and exurbs behind us, her attention is fixed on the view outside. First fields and farmland. Now forests and fresh water. We drive over the Burleigh Falls bridge, and she sighs at the sight of the rapids. We’re on a single-lane highway, and traffic is almost at a standstill, so I peel my eyes from the road and take in the cascading white water.
“It’s funny how little has changed,” Nan murmurs.
She’s dressed, as always, in a crisp white collared shirt and trousers, a polite string of pearls adorning her neck, and rose pink Chanel lipstick. Everything about her appears precise, almost stiff, a striking opposition to her playful personality. But my life-loving Nan is still not herself. I get the sense that she’s not here with me but rather lost in past trips to the cottage. It’s been a decade since her last visit.
My timer goes off. I took notes at Nan’s last doctor’s appointment. I’ve also read an entire internet’s worth of postsurgical-care articles. Bed exercises. Short walks. Icing. She isn’t supposed to sit for long stretches, so I’m pulling over every hour so she can move around.
“I need to find a spot where we can stop for a bit. Can you do those calf squeezes the physiotherapist showed you until I do?”
I feel her blue eyes on me. “You’ve got me in these compression socks already. I’m fine, Alice. I’m not going to die of a blood clot in the next ten minutes.”
Not on my watch, she won’t. “Please just do the calf squeezes, Nan.”
She lowers her glasses. “You’re not relaxing.”
“I am. I’m very relaxed.” In truth, I’ve been up since five, checking and rechecking my packing list.
Nan hums and then turns her head, gazing out the window once more.
We’re squarely in cottage country now. Billboards advertise live bait and tackle, campgrounds and cabin rentals, marinas and river rafting. Yellow signs warn drivers of deer and turtle crossings.
We stop at the Kawartha Dairy in Bancroft for ice cream cones. She has orange-pineapple, and I get Bordeaux cherry, and we eat them in the car as we embark on the last leg of the journey. The highway runs through sharp granite rock faces, and rivers and marshes glint under the early summer sun. The farther north we go, the thicker the woods and the lighter the traffic, but we’re at the tail end of vehicles. Some pull boats. Others have kayaks or canoes strapped to the roof. These hours stuck in a car are a rite for cottagers—the pilgrimage from city to lake, a ritual passed from one generation to another, along with a love of fresh air and big skies, and a tolerance for jumping into chilly water.
My family didn’t partake in the custom. The summer Nan brought Luca, Lavinia, and me to the lake sixteen years ago was my first taste of life outside of Toronto. I savored every drop. John and Joyce were traveling that year. Dad was tackling one case or another, and my grandmother wanted to give my parents a break. Heather refused to leave the city, so Nan took the twins and me with her to Barry’s Bay. I remember the town being small—a world away from the dense neighborhood where we lived.
“There it is,” she says as we round the edge of a cliff. “The big end of Kamaniskeg Lake. We’re almost there.”
I gasp at the massive expanse of blue and the small islands dotting its surface.
As we approach Barry’s Bay, water shines on one side of my car; the bustling Pine Grove Motel stands at the other. Ten minutes later, we’re on Bare Rock Lane, a bumpy stretch of road surrounded by dense forest. Slices of lake flicker between branch and bush out the window. There’s a Kalinski sign nailed to a maple at the end of the driveway, a dirt path that leads to a dark brown log cabin.
Nan sighs when it comes into view. It’s a classic cottage, built in the twenties, set on a wooded hill over Kamaniskeg. It has a stone chimney and a merry red tin roof with matching shutters. The window boxes are planted with poppy-colored impatiens. It looks like the kind of place where only good things happen. I park next to a neatly stacked row of firewood.
“Would you like me to help you out?” I ask Nan, noticing her hands are folded tight in her lap.
She shakes her head, her eyes not leaving the cottage. “I think I’ll just sit here while you find the keys.”
I climb out of the car and breathe it all in. Sun on cedar. Moss on rock. The unpolluted freshness of country air. The sounds of lake life. Waves lapping against the shore. A chain saw in the distance. A chipmunk scampering through a patch of wild strawberries.
Twigs and dry pine needles crunch under my feet as I walk to the rear of the house, looking for the outhouse, where Charlie said I’d find the key. Seeing no sign of it, I make my way around the other side of the cottage. I’m greeted with a view of the lake. It’s an overwhelmingly large pool of clear water, so spectacular I stop to marvel for a moment. But I don’t see any sort of shed.
I return to the car. “Any idea where the outhouse is?”
Nan frowns. “I didn’t think there was one—not that I can remember, anyway.”
I circle the building and still can’t find it. “Crap,” I say to the blue jay observing me from the limbs of a birch. “Crap,” I say to the spruce and maple.
I pull my phone from my pocket and call Charlie. He answers on the first ring.
“Hello, Alice Everly,” he says, drawing my name out slowly, roughing up the r in Everly. It sends a pleasant zing down my spine.
“Charlie, hi. We just got to the cottage, but I can’t seem to find the outhouse.”
“I’m good, Alice. How are you?”
“Magnificent,” I say flatly. What’s with this guy? “And you?”
“Better now that I’ve heard from you.”
I roll my eyes.
“Where are you right now?” he asks.
“Beside the woodpile.”
“And what are you wearing?”
My cheeks flash hot with anger. “Are you serious?”
He chuckles. “Not usually. Though in this case, I’m asking about your footwear. The trail to the outhouse is pretty overgrown.”
I glance down at my sandals. “I’ll be fine.”
“Walk to the back door—the one facing the bush.”
I do as Charlie says. “All right.”
“Look up the hill.”
The slope is covered in brambles and leggy saplings. Through the thicket, I spot a small wooden shed with a thatched roof just a few meters away. No wonder I couldn’t see it—it’s practically camouflaged. It probably hasn’t been used in half a century.
“You could have picked an easier spot for the key,” I say.
“There have been a couple of break-ins around the lake—kids looking for booze, probably. I didn’t want to leave the key under the mat. But if you need assistance, I can be there in five.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I say.
“Your call. See you soon, Alice Everly.”
“What do you mean by soon ?” I ask, but he’s hung up.
I stare at the outhouse, hands on my hips. Despite what Charlie thinks, I’m not the kind of city person who can’t cope without a doorman and a Starbucks within a one-block radius. I pride myself on being self-sufficient. A problem solver—never the problem. The friend you’d call if you needed help moving or fashioning a seahorse pinata for your niece’s sixth birthday. I’m that friend. Competent. Reliable. And I can cope with anything, including being dumped by the man I thought I’d marry. Including his getting engaged two months after that. And I can certainly fetch a key from a shed, even one that looks like a prop in a horror movie.
So I climb the hill. The trail isn’t overgrown; it’s nonexistent. I push aside branches, ignoring the sting of something scratching my shins. There’s a wood latch on the outhouse door, and when I turn it, it swings open, almost knocking me to the ground.
It’s so dark inside all I can make out is a white plastic toilet seat set on a raised platform. I squint into the black, and then I see a magazine rack fixed to the wall and a stack of old issues of Cottage Life on the ledge beneath. I feel around until my fingers hit a small piece of metal. But then I hear something behind me. I look up, and four sets of beady eyes stare back at me. Racoons.
If there’s one thing a Torontonian knows about wildlife, it’s to never get in the way of a mama raccoon and her babies. The big one begins making a low growling noise and I spin on my heel, losing my balance and falling out the door. With an oof , I land on a rock.
I brush myself off, hissing, and limp back to the cottage, cursing Charlie’s name.
“Everything all right?” Nan calls from the car.
“Just a minor run-in with some furry neighbors. I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding.”
I inspect my legs, and sure enough, I’m bleeding. My shins are covered in red welts, and burs have attached themselves to my nice linen shorts.
Effing Charlie Florek.
Inside, the cottage is almost exactly as I remember. The knotted wood walls are stained a deep honey brown, and the furniture is mismatched—a two-seater sofa, a floral armchair, and a leather recliner I remember sinking into when I was a teen. Strangely there’s no coffee table—I swear it used to be a trunk with puzzles and games inside. There’s a gorgeous stone fireplace, iron tools standing on a rack beside a box of kindling and newspaper, and Joyce’s bookshelf, still filled with her paperback drugstore romances. The cottage is perched just above the water, and the entire front of the space is glass. I stand there, shaking my head at how beautiful it is.
And just like that, I’m seventeen again, dressed in a terry cloth bathing suit cover-up with a camera strapped around my neck. I’m free from Trevor, from suggestions of cellulite , from the sense that I haven’t taken a photo that feels like me in months. I stare out the window, and I can see eight-year-old Luca and Lavinia leaping off the dock and a yellow speedboat ripping across the water.
But then I blink, and I’m returned to my thirty-two-year-old body. I stare at the empty bay, wondering if there’s a way to go back.
I help Nan navigate the walker into the cottage, ignoring her request to do it on her own. She looks around the living room, eyes fluttering. I squeeze her hand.
“Think we can manage two months here together?” I ask.
She nods but says nothing. Her eyes land on the bookshelf, and I watch her swallow.
“I think I need a tea,” Nan says, moving toward the kitchen. She drinks a cup of orange pekoe (one milk, one sugar) every afternoon around three. It’s almost four now.
“Let me do that,” I offer.
She swats at me. “I’m not incapacitated, Alice. I can put the kettle on. And I’m supposed to do as much as I can independently. Doctor’s orders.”
“Okay.” I eye the giant rug in the living room. It’s a tripping hazard and sure to give Nan’s walker issues. So much for Charlie taking care of everything. “I’ll get the rug out. Let me know if you need anything.”
The cottage faces south, and the sun has turned it into a sauna. My hair is curling at the nape of my neck once I’ve pushed the couch and chair off the rug. I kneel at one end so I can roll it up, but the thing is fixed in place.
“Alice?” Nan calls.
“What’s wrong?” I spring to my feet and rush into the kitchen to find her holding a sheet of paper.
“Have you seen this?”
She passes me the page.
“It was on the fridge,” Nan says.
The edge is frayed, ripped from a spiral-bound notebook, and both sides are covered in black ink. When I’ve finished reading it, my ears are ringing.
I’ve been dreaming of spending a quiet summer on the water. I’ve pictured long walks and sunrises, midafternoon swims and cozy nights with a book. I’ve imagined peace and rest and catching up on work.
But I didn’t anticipate Charlie Florek.