Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Sawyer
I SPEND THE next morning cleaning out the dock house.
For some reason, I need to be outside. Focusing my energy here gives me something to do, somewhere to put all the restless weight still sitting on my chest.
The dock house is worse than I expected. Cobwebs cling to every corner. I start with the broom, knocking them down even as I feel a twinge of guilt for undoing the intricate worlds the spiders have spun.
My thoughts drift back to Jake. I keep sweeping, harder now, as if I can drive him out of my head.
I try to steer the thoughts away, but they keep circling.
I know I shouldn’t have let him stay yesterday.
Letting him help created something between us, a thread I’m not sure I can, or should, pull tighter.
Two hours in, my palms ache from gripping the broom, and my arms are sore from scrubbing the dock floor with a bucket of soapy water and a rag.
I sit on the edge of the dock, dipping my feet into the lake. It’s still cold—spring hasn’t fully settled in yet, but the sun is warm on my shoulders, filtered through the just-emerging canopy of leaves overhead.
A soft wind moves across the water, rippling the surface. It’s the first time I’ve noticed a breeze since I got here.
The lake looks different in the light, no longer lifeless, but quietly awake. Like it’s remembering how to breathe.
I let my eyes close, just for a moment, and listen to the rhythm of it—the wind, the water, the birdsong returning after winter. And something inside me… loosens.
Then I stand and wander to the back corner of the dock house—the last section I haven’t touched yet.
It’s cluttered with gear. A deflated inner tube. A half-broken paddle. Coiled rope stiff with age.
I reach behind a leaning wooden oar and pause.
Propped against the wall, half-hidden beneath an old tarp, is a single water ski.
Faded blue. UVA sticker curling at the edges.
I know it instantly.
Tommy’s.
I pull it out carefully, brushing away a fine layer of dust. The bindings are worn, the surface sun-bleached and scratched. But it’s here.
Somehow, after all these years, it’s still here.
I sit down slowly, cradling it in my lap.
My fingers trace the shallow grooves along the edge, grooves he carved himself when we were teenagers.
He called them “battle scars.” Swore they made the ski faster.
I’d rolled my eyes but believed him anyway.
Because when Tommy said something, I believed him. Always.
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
The ache is still there, sharp as ever, but it doesn’t hollow me out the way it used to. It hurts, but it doesn’t take everything with it.
It’s strange how grief can wait in silence. How it hides in forgotten places and finds you when you least expect it.
I stand and lean the ski gently against the dock wall, upright, in view. Not hidden anymore.
He’s gone.
But he was here.
And part of him still is.