Chapter 2 Hayes
Hayes
“Explain to me again what we’re doing?”
Benny’s question pipes up behind me as I yank both our suitcases off the carousel, the wheels thudding on the floor loud enough to draw a look from the guy next to me. I grunt, shifting the bags into one hand and curling my other around the strap of her backpack. I heft it onto my shoulder.
“I owe Maverick McBride a favor,” I mutter, angling us toward the sliding doors and the wall of rain waiting outside. “So we’re doing community service.”
Benny nods, her sweet little face beaming at me. “I get to swim, right?”
“You’re always swimming.”
She hops twice to keep pace with my longer stride, French braids swinging. “Yeah, but not in a lake. The pool doesn’t count.”
“The pool doesn’t count?” I arch a brow, steering her around a slow-moving couple glued to their phones. “Since when?”
Benny heaves the most dramatic sigh a nine-year-old can muster and rolls her eyes, like I’m the densest man alive. “Since we’re headed to a lake.”
Truth is, I didn’t want to come.
Not to Washington.
Not to Fall Fest, whatever the hell that even means.
Definitely not to stand in front of a crowd and smile for pictures like some goodwill mascot. But when Maverick McBride calls in a favor, you don’t say no. And I owe him.
Another reason we’re here is the way Benny’s eyes lit up at the words trip. Plane. Lake. Festival.
She’s been talking about it for months. Making packing lists. Googling pictures of cabins and lakes. Asking me if I’ve ever seen a moose.
I huff a laugh and push the door with my shoulder.
The rain hits us like a wet slap, and my girl squeals, tucking closer to my side, pink backpack bouncing against my ribs.
I tug my ball cap lower. The brim’s useless with this downpour, and bonus, it’s probably already on some gossip account that I landed in Seattle. The internet can have the rain shot.
They can’t have my kid.
“Okay, navigator,” I say, hustling us beneath the awning where the rental cars are lined up. “Which truck do you think is ours?”
“Red one.”
The large F-150 turns out to be a beast with tires more serious than an airport rental needs to be and a front grill that looks as though it could take a pounding. Benny runs her palm along the fender like it’s a horse. “Sweet ride.”
It is a sweet ride. I thumb the fob, the lights blink, and we climb in. The engine rumbles awake; the wipers swish; garage lights smear across the windshield as we ease down the ramp and nose into the gray.
“Ahh, the open road,” I say, deadpan.
Benny snorts. “We’re still in a parking garage.”
“Details.”
She leans forward, sniffing exaggeratedly. “Already smells like fresh mountain air.”
“That’s the air freshener.”
“Don’t ruin this for me, Dad.”
I grin and merge into traffic. The rain has calmed from biblical to persistent. The city skyline blurs by in streaks as drizzle continues to fall, the GPS informing us in her soothing robotic voice that we’ll be on this road for seventy-something miles, give or take.
“Rules of the road trip,” I announce, drumming the wheel. “One: You run music, obviously. Two: No stopping ten times to pee. Three: For the first hour, no talking about homework.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” Benny rolls her eyes, digging into her backpack. “Want a Sour Patch Kid?”
I pull a face. “Yuck.”
She flips through her phone. “Do we name her or what?”
“The truck?”
“Duh.”
“She’s red,” I say. “Clifford?”
“Too obvious.”
“Fireball?”
She gives me a side glare. “Isn’t that alcohol?”
“Ketchup?”
Benny grins. “Love it.”
We leave the city behind for a two-lane highway that curls like ribbon along hillsides. Every now and then the mist thins and we get a full hit of green and russet and gold so intense it’s like someone turned the saturation up on the world.
The complete opposite of the stark landscape we left behind in Arizona.
Benny presses her forehead to the window and says “Whoa” to the passing forest.
I let the quiet stretch. Whenever there’s quiet, my brain goes to the day she arrived. Hospital lights that buzzed; my hands so unsteady they wouldn’t let me cut the cord; a nurse talking in calm, even tones while the world rushed around me like water going down a drain.
Eve, Benny’s mom, never opened her eyes again after that, and it’s been . . .
Just me and Benny ever since.
People still ask if I’m dating. If I’ll get married. If I think Ben needs a woman in her life that isn’t her grandmas or the wives of my buddies.
I never know how to say, This life isn’t about me anymore. It’s about a girl who didn’t ask to be the only child—one without a mom.
So we keep our circle small and our curtains thick and our life private where it counts. She gets to be a kid. I get to be her dad. That’s the deal, end of the fucking story.
“Dad?” Benny says, soft.
“Yeah, Bean?”
“You’re making the face.”
“What face.”
“The one Grandma calls ‘storm cloud.’”
I exhale. “Just thinking.”
“About my mom?”
“Yeah.”
She nods. We’ve had this conversation a thousand times. “Do you think she’d let me eat a caramel apple the size of my head?”
“She would’ve brought carrots and made you eat a few of them first.”
Benny smiles sideways. “She sounds smart.”
“The smartest.”
I have no idea what kind of a mother Eve would have been; we’d been dating six months, were broken up when she found out she was pregnant. Two kids in college. I was playing for a Big Ten school and shortly after Benny was born, I’d gone through the draft.
Truth is, I hardly knew Eve. I can only imagine she would have been loving and patient, but . . .
Whatever.
Who knows.
Gripping the wheel tighter, I focus as the four-lane highway turns into two. The trees crowd closer, and eventually the world opens up; suddenly we’re driving along the shores of a giant lake.
My daughter breathes a loud, excited sigh.
“‘Welcome to Star Lake,’” I read out loud as we pass the giant sign. “‘Where everyone is your neighbor.’”
Hm.
Doubt it.
We pass another sign for the Fall Fest proclaiming Pies! Axes! Hay! The pumpkin on the poster is flexing tiny biceps, which, I have to admit, is pretty fucking cute.
More signs. One telling me to take the next right to The Star Lake Lodge.
“Whoa,” Benny breathes, palm splayed on the window. “It’s like a postcard.”
Her eyes are glued to the view—shoreline stitched with docks, boats parked at each one, twinkling lights everywhere like it’s a requirement.
Ketchup’s wipers squeak once and rest.
Benny points again, voice gone soft. “Dad, look at the leaves. They look like they’re on fire.”
“I rate the leaves a nine out of ten,” I say automatically. She loves the game where we rank things.
“Rude,” she says, delighted. “Ten out of ten, would look again.”
“Ach.” I tease. “You’re too generous with your points.”
A canoe noses between docks. Kayaks bob in the water. The driver of a small SUV coming the other way does the two-finger country salute off the steering wheel.
Too friendly.
Not my vibe.
“Dad.” Benny gives my arm a light smack. “You didn’t wave.”
My brows go up. “How many times are we going to have the stranger-danger talk?”
More eye-rolling from the passenger side. “This is not stranger danger. This is small-town stuff. You just lift two fingers and wiggle them like this.” She wiggles her fingers in a hello.
“I don’t say hello to strangers.” We just went over this!
“Well, you’re in Star Lake now, and I refuse to be the daughter of a man who won’t wave. It’s so embarrassing, seriously, Dad.” She taps the window as another truck approaches. “Incoming! Go! Wave!”
I sigh, lift two fingers from the wheel. The driver—older guy, cap, and red flannel from what I can tell—grins and lifts his whole palm in return.
“There.” Benny beams. “You’ve been assimilated.”
Assimilated? I glance at her. “How do you know what that word means?”
She stares back at me. “Are you being serious right now?” She huffs. “I won the spelling bee last year, remember?”
I laugh. “How could I forget when you’re always reminding me.”
“That’s called personal branding. I’m a triple threat—cute, smart, fabulous,” she says, digging in her backpack. “Speaking of which . . .”
She drags out a sparkly spiral notebook and flips it open.
From where I’m sitting, I can see that she’s already written on the page in block letters: Star Lake To-Do List. Doodles border the margins: cute leaves with eyelashes, round pumpkins with vines around them, a steaming mug of what can only be assumed is hot chocolate with marshmallows bobbing on top.
“Okay, so,” she announces. “I made a list of things I want to accomplish since we’re only here for two days. Prepared to be razzle-dazzled.”
“I was born razzled. Dazzle me.”
She giggles before clearing her throat. “First: ‘Buy a postcard and actually mail it to Nana.’”
“Strong open.” I approve. “Love a realistic goal.”
“Item two,” she goes on. “‘Try hot cider with whip cream—there will be no photos of my whip cream mustache.’”
“I make no promises.”
“Three: ‘Swim in the lake even if it’s freezing—don’t be a baby.’”
“If it’s cold, we don’t call it swimming. We call it the Polar Plunge.”
Benny nods her agreement and goes back to her list. “‘Go hiking,’ ‘take pictures of the Bigfoot sign,’ ‘convince Dad to be in lumberjack competition.’”
My head shakes. “That’s not happening.”
She ignores me. “And last but not least, ‘meet-cute with the love of Dad’s life.’”
I nearly miss the road we have to turn on despite there being a giant Star Lake Lodge sign at the entrance. “Ah. We put that on the itinerary, did we?”
Benny doesn’t even flinch at her own freaking audacity. “Obviously. It’s a festival by a lake. Statistically, meet-cutes increase by, like, forty percent.”
“Statistically? Where did you read that?”
“TikTok.”
Of course.
I take the turn, Ketchup’s blinker ticking like a metronome. “And why is my love life on your list?”
She taps her pen against the notebook. “Don’t be weird about it.”