16. Fishing #2
"I don't really remember the day it happened," she says. "The accident. I remember before, and then I remember after, but the actual day is kind of a blank. My therapist says that's normal."
"It is."
"Annie, do you remember your day?"
"I remember most of it," I say. "I wish I didn't."
She looks at me.
"I was by myself when I got the call," I tell her. "Being alone in it was the worst part. Not the grief. The loneliness."
She's quiet again for a longer stretch.
"Uncle Herc came," she says finally. "And Uncle Stone and Uncle Admiral. They were all there. The whole..." she gestures vaguely. "The whole group of them. They stayed for a while."
"That's great that you had family," I say. "That's really good."
"Dad cried a lot," she says. "I'd never seen him cry before. It freaked me out a little. But also it made me feel better? Like I wasn't the only one." She picks at the label again.
"Is that bad? That it made me feel better to see him cry?"
"No," I say. "That's exactly what it's supposed to do. Show you your dad is human."
“He really is a good dad,” she sighs and exhales slowly and looks at the water.
“He is,” I confirm. “And I think we owe him some fish pictures.”
“We do.” She giggles. “And Annie.”
“Yeah?”“Thanks.”
***
Jake comes for dinner and brings a bottle of wine and announces he’s heard a rumor about fresh-caught fish.
Ellie laughs and looks at him. "How long have you known Annie?"
"I've known Annie since before she was a functional human being. You can ask her, she'll confirm."
"He's not wrong," I say.
Ellie considers him. "So, you grew up here too?"
Jake puts his hand on his chest. "I solemnly swear that I did."
Ellie looks at me, rolls her eyes and goes back to her homework.
Jake follows me into the kitchen and leans on the counter while I start on the fish.
"She's great," he says, quietly enough that it doesn't carry.
"Yeah," I say. "She is."
"You doing okay?"
"I'm making dinner, Jake."
"I know what you're doing. I asked how you are."
I focus on the fish. "I'm fine. It's been a good weekend."
Dinner is good and easy and loud with Jake in the room, which is always how it goes.
He tells a story about a disastrous camping trip we took in high school that makes Ellie laugh hard.
And by the end of it she's talking to him like she’s known him forever.
He has that effect. It's annoying and also one of his best qualities.
She helps clear the table without being asked and loads the dishwasher. Jake watches her and looks at me across the table.
I look back at him and smile.
He raises his eyebrows.
I shake my head and start stacking plates.
***
Ellie goes to bed around nine-thirty, worn out from the early morning, the sun and a good kind of tired. I hear her on the stairs as Jake pours the last of the wine into our glasses and nods toward the French doors.
The air on the deck is cool and breezy. The water is dark and a little choppy. All in all, the end of a good day.
"Okay," Jake says.
"Okay, what?"
"Don't do that. It's me."
I put my feet up on the rail. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"I want you to say the thing you've been not saying all night." He looks at me sideways. "The Ellie thing."
"She's a great kid."
"Yeah. And?"
I look at the water. "And nothing."
"Annie."
"Jake."
He waits. He's the most patient man I know when he wants something, which is infuriating because I taught him that.
"It feels natural," I say finally. "That's all. It feels too natural. Making sure she ate, checking on her this morning, thinking about dinner, listening to her." I stop. "It shouldn't feel that easy."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not mine." I pick up my glass. "She's not mine. This weekend isn't mine. I'm borrowing someone else's life for two days and I'm apparently very good at it, and that's..." I stop again.
Jake doesn't fill the silence. He just waits.
"I would've been good at it," I say. The words come out smaller than I expected them to.
"That's the thing. I would've been a good mother.
And I don't think about that usually. I made my peace with it.
But then this kid shows up and spends two days in my house and eats my food and tells me real things on a log by the water, and I… " I stop.
"Yeah," Jake says, gentle. Just that.
"It's not even about Doc," I say. "Not really. It's just that I didn't know it was still in there. The wanting. I thought I'd dealt with it."
"You dealt with not having it," Jake says. "That's different from not wanting it."
I look at him. Sometimes he says the exact right thing and it hits somewhere I’m not ready for.
"Yeah," I say. "Okay. Yeah."
We sit there a while. "She asked me when it gets easier," I say. "Losing her mom."
"What did you tell her?"
"The truth."
Jake nods. He reaches over and taps his glass to mine, and we drink, and we don't say anything else for a while.
***
Doc comes back late afternoon the next day.
I hear Doc’s car in the driveway from the kitchen, and Ellie, who has been allegedly finishing a lab report at the island for the last thirty minutes while actually watching something on her phone, is out the front door before I've even put down my dish towel.
I watch through the window. She goes down the porch steps fast, not running exactly, but close, and Doc is barely out of the truck before she's there, and he catches her and holds on. His eyes close. He sets his chin on top of her head.
I look away. That's theirs.
I hear them on the porch a minute later, Ellie already talking at full speed about the fish, about Jake, about how she excelled at baiting the worms. Doc saying something low in response that makes her laugh, and then the door opens and they come in.
"Hey," Doc says, when he sees me at the counter.
"Hey," I say. "Good trip?"
"Good trip." He looks around the kitchen. The evidence of the weekend is everywhere in small ways, a drawing Ellie did on the back of a grocery receipt that I didn't throw away, two fish in the fridge, a glass that's still drying on the rack. "She give you any trouble?"
"None," I say. Which is true.
Ellie is already telling him about the fishing in detail, the getting-tangled, the casting, the catch, and he listens to all of it with his whole face, nodding, asking questions, and I watch him being a father for a minute and feel the warmth of it from across the room.
"Erin texted," Ellie says, interrupting herself. "Can I go? She wants to walk down to the water."
"Yeah," Doc says. "Be back by seven."
And just like that she's gone, jacket off the hook, out the door, and we listen to her feet on the porch steps, and then it's quiet.
“That’s my whirlwind.” Doc looks at me and rubs his temples. “Glad you survived.”
“She is that, but we did just fine,” I say. "Lemonade?"
"Yeah," he says. "That would be great. Thanks."
I pour two glasses.
"So, she really caught fish," he says.
"She really did. She was very patient about it, which surprised me."
"She's stubborn," he says. "Once she decides she's going to do something."
"I noticed that." I laugh and walk over and hand him the glass. “I wonder where on earth she gets that from.”
He raises his glass, “touché.”
"She talked to me, Doc. Like, really talked."
"She did?" He sets the glass down. "About Beth?"
"Some. Mostly about mitigating loss. And real expectations." I look at him. "She asked good questions. She's a good kid. She's really working through it."
He nods, slow, and looks at his hands.
"Thank you," he says, and stands and puts his arms around me. "Really Annie, thank you."
He looks into my eyes for one brief second and then he kisses me. It's deliberate, slow and certain.
He holds me tightly and I feel the solid reality of him, the warmth, and my arms around him.
He pulls back just enough to see my face, “Tell me to stop.”
I look into his eyes. There is no other answer.“No.”