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Samantha
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“TEN AND TWO,” Dad said.
She wasn’t taking it personally that her time behind the wheel on their drive up to the cabin had been mostly silent. Brace might be fearing for his own life but he’d get over it. Dad was still fuming from an altercation with Mom. He’d gone from guardedly annoyed after Mom’s crash earlier in the year to blowing up at the slightest thing since the newspaper article.
The kids had been waiting in the truck with the windows down and heard him yell, Ya better decide what it is you want! He didn’t yell often, and when he did, he didn’t do it so loud the neighbors could hear. Until now. It made Samantha sick inside that their home might be turned upside down like she’d seen happen to other kids’ homes. And it had fixed Brace’s jaw in angry solidarity with his father.
She focused on the award of getting to drive. Then, when they hit the one lane roads of northern Wisconsin she almost welcomed Brace correcting her every move. After they arrived and unpacked, orders had to be taken and Brace started goofing around, Chuck had wandered off into the wild berries, Dad got antsy because the sunlight was waning, and little by little Mom got set aside.
The three of them headed down the wooded path to the dock and Dad attached the electric motor to the fishing boat. They trawled out to a quiet section of lake where waterbugs skipped and long-legged spiders lurked in boxy webs on low hanging branches. Chuck barked from the shore, then swam out and scared all the fish away. They hauled him into the boat and he napped in a puddle.
Brace caught three walleye, Samantha caught one herself, and Dad yanked out a big pike but threw it back after they took a picture. Back at the cabin, she volunteered for cleaning the fish. She felt it her duty to feel the guts of her own meal slide through her fingers, to become immune to the rank smell, before she enjoyed its flesh. Of course she did not say this, because Brace would have launched into some bogus Native American chant, but it felt right all the same.
After dark, the three of them relaxed in the hot tub, which was essentially a giant wooden rain barrel atop a firebox full of coals. Brace and Dad drank Miller Lite and though Dad offered her one, Samantha said no. She didn’t want to drop Lucy’s binoculars in the water. The sky was so black here that the stars provided enough light to see the smudge of the Andromeda galaxy. How many earths did Andromeda have? One? One hundred? None?
“When I met your mom,” Dad broke the eerie silence, “there was this whole fourth of July hubbub going on around us—the fireworks and the bands and the carnival. Yeah, I know, we’ve told you the story a hundred times.”
Samantha looked to Brace, expecting the sarcastic eye-roll, the annoying huff. But he only waited on his father’s words.
“It was the most magical night of my life. The strangest thing was, she had just been standing there, all alone. Like someone delivered her there. No one else next to her, no family, or friends, or boyfriend. I remember I could see the lights of the carnival in her eyes. She was beautiful. Sweet as can be. Couldn’t believe my luck. We said hi to each other and we never shut up.” He shook his head and took another swig.
Without phones or clocks or TV or video games, minutes stretched like years out into the void.
“I didn’t understand it at the time,” Dad said. Brace startled and the steaming water sloshed. “I had no idea your mom’s heart had already been broke. And I guess you kids know all about that now, but it’s important for you to try to understand. Hell, it’s taken me years to get it and I’m not even sure she does completely. There are people who marry their high school sweetheart and stay together forever. They never got that chance.”
Dad was silent again for a while. “When you’re married, yes, you belong to each other.” He looked to his children. “But you don’t—you don’t own each other. Does that make sense?”
Samantha and Brace slowly nodded. She looked to her brother, who lowered his head. She could not be sure if it was condensation on his cheeks.