Page 30 of The Last Thing You Said

“Listen, today was fine, but you know, I guess I’d rather not take Emily out on the boat anymore. Makes me nervous.”

She lifts her hand to shield her eyes from the bright sun behind me. She must know I’m lying.

But Lucy almost broke me when she reached for my two-hundred-dollar rod and reel that I don’t even let Guthrie use and then jerked away like I’d stung her.

“If you say so, Ben.” Tami goes back to her vegetables.

I do. I say so.

I drive around for a while, not ready to go home. I rub my hand across the top of the steering wheel.

“Hey, beauty,” I say. If there’s one thing I can count on, it’s my car. She’s old but she hasn’t failed me yet.

I bought the Firebird the spring before Trixie died, the spring of my sophomore year. I’d been sixteen for only a few weeks, but I’d been saving for months. This guy named Buck who went to high school with my dad was selling it, and even though he’d wanted to unload it before winter, he’d told me he’d wait until I had the money. I picked up a part-time gig doing maintenance at the arena and helped out John at the resort with occasional odd jobs.

The four of us—Dad, Mum, Trixie, and me—drove out to Buck’s house on Iron Lake once I had the check. He lived way past Clayton and Lucy’s, down a narrow one-lane gravel road on the peninsula. He handed me the keys on a water-stained leather fob, and I slid in and everything was right in the world.

“Her name is Brigitte,” Buck said. He had a long gray ponytail and reeked of stale cigarettes. He leaned in, his arm across the top of the doorframe.

“Her?”

“Yeah. Brigitte. Named her after a girl I knew in college. Take good care of her, now.”

“Will do,” I said.

“And don’t smoke in her. That was my only hard and fast rule. You gotta show the old girl some respect.”

Trixie rode home with me. She put her feet up on the dash.

“Get your filthy flip-flops off my new car,” I said, and swatted her leg.

“Don’t you mean Brigitte?” she said. “That guy. What a weirdo.”

“I don’t know about weird. He works at the marina. He’s decent. I mean, to hold onto her until I had the money, you know?”

“Seems like a waste to go to college and end up working at a marina,” Trixie said. “I mean, I know that college is more than just your degree, but really?”

I thought about that for a while as we drove down County 5, Iron Lake on one side of us, Halcyon Lake on the other. Trixie had it all worked out. She’d go to school to become an elementary-school teacher, coach the swim team, someday have a family, but not before she’d lived in London with our gram for a year or two. She knew what she wanted out of life. Mum and Dad thought I should be a teacher, too. Summers off, Dad always said, can’t beat that. But I couldn’t see myself cooped up in a classroom for nine months of the year. I didn’t want to teach, I wanted to fish. I needed to be outside.

“I don’t know,” I said. I was going to be a junior. My parents were after me for a decision—I’d already made one, I just hadn’t told them. I wanted to go to the University of Minnesota up in Crookston and study natural resources. Water management. I told Trixie that day.

“Good for you,” she’d said. “You don’t always have to be what people expect you to be. Do what you love, Ben. Life is short, so live it. Be happy.”

“Okay, okay. I get the picture.”

She would have been a great teacher.

I don’t call the Firebird Brigitte, but I see Buck around town once in a while. He always caresses her and tells her he still loves her. And I think about that day and how Trixie told me to be happy.

I would have been happy living in Halcyon Lake for the rest of my life, I think, if Trixie hadn’t died. Maybe I would have started my own guide business. Maybe someday I would have taken over Apple Tree Lane. But Minnesota’s full of lakes, everywhere you look. Northern Wisconsin, too. I can leave town, like Clayton did, walk away and not look back.

But not today. I pull into the arena parking lot and turn around toward home.

17 · Lucy

Sunday night, after my shift at the Full Loon, I ride home with my mom. Usually she doesn’t stay much past seven on Sundays, but tonight she waited for me.

As soon as we’re out of town, she says, “I’m sure you’ve heard I finally hired Rita’s replacement.”