Page 60 of Acadia Falls

Tommy squeezed tighter. “Enough!” I jumped off Trey and pulled my brother off Cuddy before he did, in fact, kill him. Cuddy spluttered when his windpipe was free, coughing, choking, and rolling around on the dock. Trey had his T-shirt balled up, pressing it against his nose.

He crawled away from me toward his wheezing crew, and Tommy and I stepped back.

“Nice, guys,” the wailing girl’s father called to us. “You’re setting a great example for my five-year-old.”

Tommy gave him the finger.

“C’mon, Tommy, knock it off. Let’s go.” We staggered down the dock, away from the mess we’d made.

Ralph watched us from his perch at the co-op’s entrance. His arms were crossed against his flannel, and his eyes twinkled from beneath his woolen cap. “Did you boys enjoy yourselves?”

“Shut up, Ralph.” Tommy limped past him.

“I heard that,” Ralph grumbled.

“Again, fine by me,” Tommy muttered under his breath.

We reached the truck, and only then did I dare turn around and take in the scene behind us. Trey had pulled Cuddy up and was talking to him; Ralph was watching them without offering help; the fishermen coming in stayed on their boats, idling while they waited for Trey and Cuddy to scuttle off; and the families on the dock were boarding the mailboat. The father who’d yelled at us held his daughter in his arms, patting her hair. He gave us one final dirty look as he disappeared into the cabin.

“Tommy.” I turned my attention to my reflection in the mirror, using an old napkin to wipe the blood from beneath my nose. “You ever think we’re getting too old for this shit?”

“Yep.” My brother sighed. “It’s fucking depressing, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” I answered. “It sure is.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

JACK

The last thing I wanted to do was face my mother that night, but I had little choice. Rose Brennan was making a roast, and her boys were going to be at that dinner table.

Or else.

Still, I managed to hide from her for the rest of the afternoon. She’d probably already heard about the fight. She would be on edge, angry that we’d caused a scene. She was probably talking to my father’s ghost while she cleaned the kitchen and prepped for dinner. Our boys don’t seem to be growing up. What the heck am I supposed to do with them?

It was a valid question.

I grabbed a kombucha from the fridge and headed out to the edge of our property. There was a pond behind the old shed. It was a good place to think because it was quiet, just the mosquitos and me.

I sat there, unseeing, squinting out at the skim of pollen on the water. I didn’t regret beating up Trey. He’d stolen from my family, and he abso-fucking-lutely deserved it. But putting my fist in his face hadn’t satisfied me the way that I’d hoped. It had felt… anticlimactic.

Also, I felt bad about making that little girl cry. The look on her father’s face, the disgust, kept playing in my mind. His expression read: Can’t you guys do better?

It was also a valid question.

I laid back in the grass, listening to the buzz of nature. Normally, I did not give a shit what other people thought. I rarely noticed the families who rented houses on LSI for a week during the summer. They were like the clouds in the sky, interchangeable, just passing through on their way to who-knows-where. But making that little girl cry was wrong. Even though her dad was probably some self-important executive from Mass-hole-chusetts, who’d driven his family up north in his pretentious luxury SUV, he was still a dad. He still cared about his kid. And all I’d done was given her something crappy to remember from her family vacation.

I was almost thirty years old. If I didn’t start doing better now, when would I?

We had to decide what to do with our fishing rights. It seemed as though I was at a crossroads. It had been forced on me, but sometimes the universe rolled like that. If you weren’t making progress, sometimes that shit just happened to you. You got clobbered over the head with it.

And I definitely wasn’t making progress. I’d treated Maran like she was just a fling because I didn’t know what else to do. Even though I had feelings for her, I’d blown her off. Why did I do that? Why had I let those lots sit empty all these years? Why was I wasting another summer of my life getting drunk and high, partying, and getting into fistfights?

Maran’s words echoed in my head. “Nobody has to say they’re sorry when it’s a summer fling.”

But I was sorry. I’d made her feel like she didn’t mean anything to me, and that wasn’t true. My mother was right—I was getting too old for a summer fling. And that wasn’t why I was thinking about Maran; it was because I genuinely cared for her. It happened to coincide with me waking up a little and taking stock.

I was also getting too old for fighting. I could still kick some serious ass, but perhaps it was time to focus on other, more productive matters. Like getting my life together.