“Hey,” I said after a moment. “No shoes in the tent.”
So I crawled to her feet and plucked open the buckle on her little ankle boot. I slipped my fingers in and felt the bony knob of her heel, hot and damp in my hands, in her sock. Then I slipped the bootlet off, reached over and undid the other. Her feet in her socks seemed so vulnerable to me, so ridiculously small. I set her heels down next to each other, and the crying stopped. I heard it turn back into regular breathing.
Before I lay back, before I pulled up my sleeping bag, I checked the hatchet out of habit. The wooden handle under my fingers was like a promise fulfilled. I knew, before touching it, everything there was to know about it. Which made me confident and glad.
Later when I woke up, I found Patra had curled up around Paul. Back to me. But I could feel her curved spine through her jacket when I pushed in closer, all those little vertebrae linked up, all those bones laid out, like a secret. The night had come down hard, finally. Thunder was rumbling far away. Wind had kicked up waves, and they were loud enough now that I could hear them on the shore of the lake, shoving pebbles forward and back. I could hear pine needles whipping the roof of the house. I could hear Paul and Patra, breathing in syncopation.
Happy. I was happy.
I barely recognized the feeling.
So who could blame me for wishing that the husband’s rescheduled plane would drift into a lowlying thunderhead? That it would shunt in sudden turbulence, lose elevation fast? Who could blame me for hoping his pilot would be young and scared, that he’d turn around and fly back over the ocean? The husband had his own baby stars to watch over and his own mountain to do it from, in Hawaii. I longed for straight-line winds between him and me, for hurricanes off the California coast. Downpours and lightning. The thunder was getting louder now. I felt the tent I’d built gather us in, Paul and Patra. Patra and me.
I slept and woke. I dreamed of the dogs. I dreamed of taking Patra and Paul out on the canoe, currents like underwater hands thrusting the boat around, so we had to fight to go forward. My paddle guiding us toward shore. Or maybe guiding us away from it, maybe we were leaving after all. I slept and woke. Slept.
Eventually, just after dawn, I heard scuffling outside. It sounded like a slow-moving mammal, a possum or raccoon, unsettling the driveway stones. Then I heard a car door thump. Very gently I sat up and pulled the hatchet from under Paul’s pillow. I unzipped the tent, tiptoed across the braided rugs, crept to the front window. There, in the driveway, in the early morning light, stood a man in a blue slicker next to a rental car. He held a brown sack of groceries, a duffel bag. He looked bland and harmless—so when he opened the door I let the hatchet hang in my hand where he could see it. And Patra was right: I could hear him think. I could hear him taking in the dark room and the tent on the floor and the tall, scrawny kid coming out from the shadows, with a good-sized weapon.
Here’s how the story about Lily went. It was simple at first, but as time passed, as the rumor was repeated and spread, it grew more and more detailed. Mr. Grierson, last fall, had taken Lily out on a canoe. Gone Lake was the largest of four just outside town. It was so round that in the center the bank looked like a ribbon of black, and in the gloom of a mid-October afternoon, it no doubt disappeared altogether. Everyone could imagine this. It was a good choice, Gone Lake. They both paddled because, Mr. Grierson said, a little exercise builds trust between people. He sat in back and steered, though Lily, of course, could have gotten them where he wanted to go much faster. Like all of us, she could paddle a boat like she could ride a bike. Mr. Grierson, the Californian, splashed and tottered. Got his pants soaked, got his shoes wet. By the time they reached the middle of the lake, the day was gone and the water was oil black. The sky, clear, was thick with stars. And though it was chilly—though most of the aspens had let loose their leaves already—they didn’t wear gloves or hats. They had to set their dripping paddles across their laps, had to warm their hands, in turns, on a thermos lid of steaming coffee.
At any point along the way, Lily could have tipped the boat and stranded Mr. Grierson. All it would have taken was a hard lurch to one side. She knew this lake like her own pretty face. He knew nothing at all. When he pulled out a disposable camera and aimed it at her, he acknowledged as much. He said he wanted Lily to know how vulnerable he was, how his fate was in her hands. He said if he were lucky enough to get back to the car, it would be because of Lily’s kindness and mercy. He wanted her to know how grateful he was—in advance. Before he unzipped his pants, before he said just a kiss and pushed her down, he wanted her to know she had a choice.
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