Page 1 of The Last Thing You Said

MAY

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

—Aristotle

1 · Lucy

This can only get easier.

It’s my first day at the resort, at the summer job I didn’t want but took because I couldn’t find a way to say no.

Emily pokes my arm. “Lucy?”

“Hmm?” I look down at the little girl. We sit on the sidewalk in front of her house, a bucket of colored chalk next to her. She holds a bright blue piece in one hand and shields her eyes from the sun with the other as she looks up at me.

“Can I have a drink?”

I tug on one of her blond pigtails. “Your water bottle is on the porch,” I say, and she hops up.

Emily turned five a few weeks ago. She’s a smart girl and knew a hundred words by the time she was two—I know because Trixie and I made a list. Emily is Trixie’s cousin. We used to babysit her together; now it’s only Emily and me.

It’s the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend, fishing opener. A teaser—soon summer will arrive here in Halcyon Lake and hundreds of other small Minnesota resort towns like ours in the land of 11,842 lakes. School will end, and our sleepy little town will wake up, overrun with tourists.

Trixie’s aunt and uncle—Emily’s parents—own the Cabins at Apple Tree Lane. It’s been in their family for generations, just like my family’s restaurant. My job here is to take care of Emily and help out with housekeeping and light maintenance at the resort. I’ll pick up as many shifts as I can at the restaurant, too, to help out.

Busy is good.

“Lucy?” Emily has gotten her water bottle and set it on the sidewalk next to her colorful chalk drawings of misshapen butterflies. “Can we go swimming today?”

It’s spring, too early for swimming. And even though I grew up splashing around the lake in my backyard, fishing and water-skiing and tubing, I’ve never been much of a swimmer. Even before.

Trixie was a champion swimmer, strong and fast, a fish streaking through the water.

“Ooh, too cold,” I say.

“Lucy?”

“Yes, Emily?”

“Tell me a Trixie.”

I smile. This has become one of our favorite activities, a way I can keep Trixie alive. The stories I tell Emily about her cousin have become a part of our routine.

“Once upon a time—” I start.

“There lived a happy little girl named Beatrix.”

“But everyone called her Trixie.”

“And she had a brother named Ben.”

“Right,” I say. “She had a brother named Ben.” My throat tightens a little at his name.

“Tell me the first one, the first Trixie.” Emily laughs, a dramatic ha-ha-ha with her hands on her stomach. She’s playing along. This is how the Trixies go. I only tell the happy Trixies.

“One day, when Trixie was five years old, she went to kindergarten—”

“And she met Lulu. Lulu! That’s you.”