Ian, Joyce, and Maggie were back at the lake hours before any one expected them. From the way that Maggie slammed the car door it was clear to Phoebe what had happened. Joyce would have let the whole trip be about pleasing Maggie. Where did Maggie want to eat? What movie did Maggie want to see? And you didn’t treat sullen teenagers like that. They just got more sullen, trying to see how much more they could get.
“Teenagers are difficult,” was all Gwen said.
“I wasn’t,” Holly said.
“No.” Gwen patted her arm. “You weren’t.”
And Phoebe hadn’t been either.
“What’s the history here?” Holly asked. “Why does Joyce let Maggie get away with this?”
There were only four of them on the lakeside porch of the main cabin, Dad, Gwen, Holly, and Phoebe herself. She had no idea where Jack and Amy were.
Dad answered. “Joyce’s mother remarried when she was a girl. Her stepfather already had a couple of kids, and then he and her mother had some more. Joyce felt that no one paid any attention to her, that she was never heard. Ian understood that. That’s why he has stepped back and let Maggie have more of a voice than most kids. But clearly he has let things get too far.”
Phoebe was surprised. She had never heard her father criticize anyone in the family behind their back.
He continued. “Ian has probably spent his entire married life trying to prove that he loves Maggie. He does, but I suspect that Joyce doesn’t believe it. There’s probably nothing he can do to convince her that he does.”
That made sense. Phoebe had never thought of it that way.
This was strange. She knew her father was a quiet, observant man, but she had never had any idea how much he truly did observe. He understood Ian and Joyce so well. She felt suddenly uneasy. What had her father observed about her?
“Are you going to say anything to him?” Gwen asked.
“I have never interfered in the kids’ adult lives, and this doesn’t seem like the time to start.”
If anyone was going to say anything to Ian—Phoebe certainly was not—he needed to be told not to overact. He was furious with Maggie, and after all these years of indulgence, he was suddenly getting tough.
At the evening campfire he was after her constantly, wanting her to help as much as Ellie was. He was quiet about it, he was trying to not humiliate her publicly, but it was also very clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer. She had to help the little kids put their marshmallows on sticks. She had to shake the popcorn popper. He was trying to turn her into Ellie.
It was too much, too fast. You can’t make an Ellie overnight, Phoebe wanted to caution him. Teenagers were so fragile, so explosive. Maggie wasn’t going to accept these changes meekly. She would thrash against the new leash, she would struggle, she would fail, not caring what or whom she damaged.
Phoebe could only hope that the damage didn’t happen at the lake.
The sky was dark, the usual pelter of stars hidden behind thick clouds. The wind came up, and they put out the campfire early. Giles’s leg was hurting him; he had done too much on the canoe trip. He was restless all night, and Phoebe kept waking, hearing the sharp gusts outside their window and fierce crackling of lightning overhead.
But there was no rain, and the strong winds took the clouds with them. When Phoebe woke the next morning, the light pouring through the little four-paned bedroom window was bright. She could hear Giles up in the kitchen making coffee, talking to Thomas. She shoved her feet into her slippers and was coming back from the biffy when she heard the kids rushing along the path.
“Dad, Dad…your boat.” Their voices were frantic, urgent.
“Uncle Giles, the boat, the boat.”
Giles heard and came out of the cabin, his face tense, puzzled, his brow lowered. “Go on,” he nodded to her. He didn’t have his built-up shoe on yet. “Go see.”
She grabbed Thomas, ran down the path, slipping down the log steps, the kids milling around her.
There was already a crowd on the dock. Dad and Gwen, Ian and Joyce, Amy. Jack was calf deep in the water, standing by Giles’s boat.
It was ruined. Giles’s beautiful wood boat was ruined. The heavy winds had first smashed it against the shore and then swung it back into the dock’s steel uprights, splintering its sides. Heavily filled with water, it was listing, the starboard stern resting on the sand at the bottom of the lake.
“The rope must have come untied,” Scott shouted. “The rope at the dock must have come untied.”
“Be quiet,” Ian ordered.
Giles always tied the boat at an angle from the shoreline, knotting one end to the dock and the other to a tree on the bank. He left enough play in the ropes to give them strength, but kept them taut enough so that the boat would hit neither the dock nor the shore. Now the boat was tied only at the shore.
Phoebe saw her father step toward the end of the dock. She looked up. Giles was coming down the steps.
These steps were always hard for him. They were awkwardly spaced for his gait and there was no rail.
Why didn’t we ever put up a rail? All these years…Giles has been coming here for all these years, and we never put up a rail.
Giles was coming down slowly, not looking at his feet. He was staring at the boat. Everyone was watching him.
This boat had been his. The one thing that had belonged to him here.
“I don’t know much about boats.” It was Jack, speaking from the water. “But this looks bad.”
Thomas was squirming, pushing Phoebe’s chest with his little fists. She was holding him too tightly. The other kids were, for once, silent, aware of the adults’ distress, frightened by it.
“Did the rope break?” Giles asked. It was the first thing he had said.
They all glanced at the upright. No. There was no line dangling from it. The knot had come undone.
This made no sense. Giles’s knots were good. The rope might break, but Giles’s knots wouldn’t come untied. Giles tied good, clean, strong knots.
Giles didn’t answer.
“It was me.”
Nick’s voice came from the steps. He looked rumpled, still in the sweats he had slept in. Maggie was a few steps behind him. Obviously the noise had woken both of them up. “Giles asked me to tie it up last night.”
“My leg hurt,” Giles said.
“Did you forget to come down, Nick?” Gwen spoke carefully.
“No. No, I did. I tied it up. I thought it was pretty cool that he had asked me.” Nick was mumbling a bit, looking at his feet, seeming young. Then he lifted his head, looking straight at Giles. He came down the steps, moving easily despite the sutures in his leg. “I know what the boat means to you. I thought it was cool that you trusted me. But I must have screwed up. It was my fault.”
Everything Phoebe had ever heard about Nick’s home life suggested constant evasion of responsibility, continual blaming of others. But Nick was stepping right up and accepting the blame here.
It was good for him…but oh, what he had done to Giles. He could never know.
“He didn’t screw up.” Jack was out of the water now. He had kicked off his shoes before going in to check the boat, but he hadn’t rolled up his jeans. The lower part of the legs was dark and wet. “I’m sorry, Nick, I know this is insulting, but I heard Giles ask you, and I came down afterward and checked your knots. Giles may have trusted you, but I guess I didn’t. I should have. I always hated it when my dad checked everything I did. But they were good knots. I tugged hard on them. There was no way they could have loosened. The ropes would have snapped before those knots came undone.”
Nick ducked his head. Phoebe supposed that he didn’t want anyone to see his relief.
“Then how did it happen?” Ellie asked. “What about when you came down, Maggie? Were the knots—”
“I didn’t come down last night,” Maggie snapped.
“Yes, you did. During the campfire you left. I thought you were just going to the biffy, but then we broke up a minute later, you were coming up—” Ellie stopped.
She turned toward Phoebe, her eyes desperate. Phoebe knew her daughter. Ellie didn’t know what to do. She was confused, anguished. Ellie never accused anyone of anything.
“I don’t know…” Ellie’s voice trailed off. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
Before Phoebe could speak, before she could urge her responsible, observant daughter to have confidence in what she had seen, Ian spoke. “No. You wouldn’t have been wrong about that.” His voice grew stern. “Maggie, did you come down to the dock last night? Did you untie the boat?”
Maggie glared at him. “You all think this place is so all-fired wonderful. Everything about it is so la-de-da precious—”
“Maggie, did you untie Giles’s boat?”
“No. I mean, I was leaning against the post a bit, and maybe I may have loosened the knot a little, I don’t know. Why should I care?”
Maggie had untied Giles’s boat. It had been deliberate; she had meant to do it. At the campfire they had all been talking about how the winds were coming up. She knew what might happen.
“It’s just a boat,” she protested. “So what if—”
“Shut up,” Ian snapped.
“Well, all right, I will.” Maggie whirled and marched up the steps.
“She wouldn’t have done it”—Joyce would, Phoebe knew, defend Maggie in any situation, she would excuse any behavior—“if she wasn’t so unhappy here. It’s not her fault. You can’t blame her.” And she went racing up the hill after her daughter.
Ian watched her go. “Maggie’s fifteen years old. You can too blame her,” he said. Slowly he turned to Giles. “I know this isn’t something money can fix, but—”
Giles held up his hand. “Not yet.”
Giles usually didn’t admit that things hurt. He had suffered so much as a kid, and then in his job, he couldn’t take anything, not anything, personally so he had learned not to mind.
But this hurt.
He spoke slowly. “Jack, I don’t want to see it again. Would you take care of it? Sink it, burn it, I don’t care.”
Jack nodded. “Sure thing.”
Giles turned and began to clump up the bank. Phoebe moved to follow him. Gwen stepped forward, her arms out for Thomas. Thanks, Phoebe mouthed.
Ellie caught up with her at the top of the steps. “Mom, Mom. Is Dad okay?”
“He will be. But for the time being he’s pretty upset.”
“I hate Maggie.” Ellie was pale. Her freckles stood out. “She’s awful.”
“She does seem that way right now.”
Nick appeared at Ellie’s shoulder. “Do you want us to get the little kids out of the way? We could take them to the sand pit or something.”
“That would be a big help,” Phoebe said. “I don’t think they’ve had breakfast. Take a box of cereal and the paper bowls.” Joyce had made such a fuss about the disposable bowls Gwen had bought that no one had used them, but right now Phoebe didn’t care what Joyce thought. “Make it into a picnic. Gwen has Thomas. I’m sure that’s okay with her, but ask her anyway to be sure.”
Nick was nodding. “And, Phoebe…will you tell Giles, I’m really sorry about his boat.”
Phoebe touched his cheek. “We know you are.”
She hugged Ellie and followed the path to the new cabin, but through the open screen she heard Joyce and Maggie. Giles couldn’t have gone in there, not with the two of them. Nor would he have gone to the log cabin, not when they weren’t staying in it. She peeked in the garage, where he had worked on the boat, but of course he wasn’t there. The garage would be full of too many memories of the boat.
Here he was, suffering, and he didn’t even have a place of his own to go to.
She rounded the three-sided woodshed. There he was sitting on a stump, his hands linked between his knees. The stump was used as a chopping block. It was surrounded by a thick layer of wood chips; they were pale and fragrant. Phoebe went over, put her hands on his shoulders.
How grateful she was that Gwen had been there to take Thomas, that she didn’t have a child on her hip, that at this moment she was here as Giles’s wife, not as someone else’s mother, not as a dead woman’s daughter.
“Oh, Giles, I’m so sorry, and I know it won’t be the same, but let’s just go buy another boat. Let’s go into town today.”
How she had minded all the changes Jack and Gwen were making. Talking, planning, taking years to do something…that was part of being at the lake. Giles had been quick to understand that code. That’s why he had refinished the boat in the first place rather than buying a new one; that’s why he had spent two years fishing from a canoe while he had worked on it, because he had been willing to do things the Legend way.
But things had changed. It was time to accept that.
Giles shook his head. “I know everyone else would feel better if we did. But I don’t want it to look fixed when it’s not.”
She ran a hand through her hair. As always, he was exactly right. She was too willing to accept solutions that looked fixed.
“You know you’re paying for Ian’s mistake. He was coming down on her so hard last night. She wanted to lash out at some dad figure, but she was scared to hurt him, so she hurt you.”
“I don’t really care.”
Phoebe heard the motorboat starting. Who would be water skiing now? Then she remembered. It would be Jack getting ready to tow Giles’s boat somewhere.
Giles heard too. He stood up. There were deep V-shaped cuts in the stump. Nick had been learning to split wood; sometimes he used too much force, and his maul drove the wedge all the way into the stump. “The boat was one thing I loved here. So, from my point of view, there’s no reason to come back. Other lakes have better fish. God knows there’s more comfort and privacy anywhere else.”
“What are you saying?” Phoebe sank back against a tree.
He put his hands in his pockets. He didn’t do that often. He didn’t feel balanced. “For sixteen years I’ve been coming here for you and the kids. I know it’s great for them, this time with their cousins, and I know it means the world to you, but it’s my turn now, Phoebe. I’m a grown man. I have a tough job and I make a decent living. But on vacations I come play son-in-law. At first I did it for you. Now I do it for the kids because they do get so much out of this. But what’s in it for me? The boat. And now it’s gone.”
Phoebe knew that all of this was true. She knew it. But she couldn’t bear hearing what was going to come next.
“It’s time for us to get a place of our own.”
“Somewhere else?” She could hardly breathe.
“Yes. I don’t care where. It can still be in Minnesota if you want. The place is full of lakes. Let’s find a new one and build our own cabin, one that’s exactly right for the six of us and not worry about anyone else.”
“And not come back here?”
“Not like this, not for a month. Maybe a week. That’s what most people do, Phoebe. They don’t spend a whole month with their families.”
“But the kids—”
“The kids will be fine. Cousins and grandparents are important, but they need to understand that their mom and dad and brothers and sisters are first.”
Are first…Phoebe felt sick. She agreed with Giles. But had she lived by it? Or had her mother always been too important to her? Not just since her death, but always? Had that kept her and Giles from starting their own family traditions?
She couldn’t protest, not now. Not ever. There was nothing to do. This was going to happen. She could only sit here, her back against a birch tree, her palms pressing into the moss. She wanted to shriek apologies. I’ve been wrong, all wrong. Tears were smarting in her eyes. Guilt was biting at her, and fear too. This was going to happen.
She was going to lose the lake.
She loved Giles. She loved him with all her heart. She respected him more than anyone else on earth. And she was going to have to give up the lake for him.
The whole time on the dock Hal had not said a word. Gwen tried to imagine what would have happened if John, her first husband, had been here. He would have taken over. He would have barked at Maggie, sent her to her room. He would have dismissed Joyce, refused to listen to her excuses. The two of them would have forgotten their guilt, letting it sink beneath their anger of him, and everyone else would have felt useless, unable to act.
Gwen further suspected that if Eleanor, Hal’s first wife, had been here, she too would have taken over, meting out justice as she saw fit.
Sometimes it was better to let things play out.
She took Thomas up to the main cabin and settled him down for his morning nap. She finished up the breakfast dishes, and when Hal came up, he said he would stay with the sleeping boy. She went to the new cabin. She knocked lightly and went in.
She hadn’t been in this cabin since everyone arrived. She had forgotten how light it was, how bright the view from the plate-glass windows. The bank in front of this cabin was rocky; there were fewer trees, and so you could see the lake from inside the cabin. The main cabin, where she and Hal stayed, had a more wooded site and little windows; all you could see through them was branches and pine needles.
The living arrangements here made no sense. This should be the cabin where everyone ate and cooked.
Ian, Maggie, and Joyce were all here, and they were all reading. Ian was at the table looking through a catalogue. Maggie and Joyce each had a murder mystery. It was as if they were all alcoholics, desperately fumbling for a drink in the face of stress.
What would this family be like if you took away their books. It might make them face things. It would force them to spend time together. Gwen now understood why it was so important to them to come to a place where there were no phones, no televisions or newspapers. They didn’t believe they could be a family when there were outside distractions. They didn’t trust themselves to pay attention to each other when there was a morning paper to read or phone calls to return.
Ian looked up at her, and Gwen thought she saw a plea in his eyes. We’re stuck. We don’t know what to say to each other. We don’t know what to do first. Help us.
She spoke. “Maggie, you need to make two apologies, and I expect you to do them before lunch.”
Maggie started to protest. Gwen ignored her. “You must first apologize to Giles. At this point in your life you can’t possibly understand what you have done to him, but you must still apologize. Second, you must apologize to everyone, from Claire and Emily on up to your grandfather, for being so disruptive and spoiling everyone’s morning.”
“Isn’t anyone going to apologize to me?”
Gwen supposed she shouldn’t be surprised by that. How unfair it was to allow a child to be this self-centered. “No,” she said firmly, “no one is going to apologize to you.”
“This isn’t any of your business, Gwen,” Joyce said.
“How you choose to raise your children is not my business. But the peace of the family table is my concern, and we aren’t going to pretend that this didn’t happen.”
“I’m not going to apologize.” Maggie slammed her book to the floor. “I don’t give a fuck about your stupid family table. If anyone cared about this stupid shit about the fucking family—”
“Maggie—” Ian’s voice was stern, shocked.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Dad. Don’t you be such a hypocrite. You and Mom have done nothing but complain about Gwen. Every time her back is turned you whine and complain. Now all of a sudden you—”
“Maggie! Now you must apologize to Gwen.”
What a family. Maggie had destroyed Giles’s boat, and everyone was up here reading. Say what Gwen knew to be the truth, and they were at last ordering the girl to apologize.
“What’s all this crap about apologies?” Maggie stormed. “It’s not going to change anything. What was so goddamn important about Giles’s boat anyway? Let him buy another. You guys have always said that they aren’t using any of Gran’s money like we are. Let them start.”
Gwen had no idea what she would do if a child of hers spoke like that. Was it too late for Maggie? She honestly didn’t know.
But she had done what she could. She had set down her rule. The rest was up to Giles and Joyce.
“I meant what I said,” Gwen spoke softly, firmly. “You will not sit down to eat with the rest of the family until you have apologized.”
“Like I’m supposed to care about that. So I don’t get to eat with the ankle biters and Miss Goody-Goody. My heart is broken.”
Gwen turned, walked out. She let the screen fall shut behind her. She went back to the main cabin, put together a snack, and bicycled it down to the kids at the sand pit. Nick and three of the kids were playing “Mother, May I?” The cereal box, milk carton, and used bowls were neatly piled at the side of the road.
“Where’s Ellie and Emily?” Gwen asked.
“They’re in the ladies’ room, I believe.” Nick made a bit of a face.
Apparently this wasn’t a simple pee in the woods. “Do you have toilet paper?”
“Ellie has her fanny pack, and if I know her, she has an itty-bitty but fully usable chemical toilet in it.”
It was odd, wonderful, to hear Nick speak so positively about someone. “She’s a good kid, isn’t she?”
“She does step up and do her share.” He looked down at his feet, then looked back up at her. “How come Val and Barb never do their share? Why do they dump everything on you all the time?”
“Because I let them,” Gwen answered. “I probably shouldn’t. But habits are hard to break. Barbara’s my little sister; Valerie is her child. But don’t feel guilty because you are one of the things that have gotten dumped. You’ve been a joy this summer.”
Nick ducked his head. “I don’t know about that.” Then he looked off into the woods. “That really was shitty, what Maggie did, wasn’t it?”
Gwen nodded. “Yes, it was.”
“I sort of feel like maybe it was my fault.”
Phoebe had told her what had apparently happened on the canoe trip. Gwen shook her head. “No, Nick, whatever you did, you can’t possibly think of it as your fault. Maggie’s spent her whole life getting her way. That’s not your doing. And”—Gwen wasn’t quite sure how to put this—“word on the street is that you didn’t do anything.” That was Jack’s position; he was maintaining that Nick hadn’t had sex with Maggie, although he didn’t seem to have any reason for thinking that.
Nick grinned, and for a moment Gwen thought of Jack, how naughty and gorgeous he had always looked at this age. “That’s the bitch of it. I can’t help thinking that all of this wouldn’t have happened if I had.”
Gwen was not about to endorse that position. “I doubt that, but let’s not look backward.”
Ellie and Emily reappeared. Emily was having “tummy problems,” Ellie reported, and would like to go back to the cabins. “Is that okay?” she asked Gwen.
“Of course.” Five-year-old Emily with her routine stomach complaint had just as much right to her parents’ attention as did Maggie. But she wasn’t going to get it.
Gwen took the bike back to the cabins and asked Hal to go pick Emily up in the car. Thomas was awake. She picked him up and went along the path to the other cabins. Ian came out to meet her. “Maggie and Joyce are packing,” he said. “They’re going home.”
“Oh, Ian,” she sighed. “Is that really necessary?”
“Joyce seems to think so. All morning Maggie’s been insisting how much she hates it here. She really doesn’t, she’s just horrified by what happened. She’s painted herself in a corner, and I think we ought to help her get out of the corner, even if it means walking over wet paint and having to do the work all over again, but Joyce doesn’t. I think you were right to tell her to apologize, that would have been a good first step, but Joyce can’t see that.”
“Are you all going or only the two of them?”
“Joyce thinks we all should leave, but I’m not going to give Maggie the power to drag Scott and Emily around. So I’m hoping it’s all right if the three of us stay.”
“Of course it is. You know that.” Then Gwen remembered why she had come. “Emily’s not feeling well. I think it’s a very routine little case of diarrhea, but this isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to have the runs. Maybe Joyce will want to stay at least until she feels better.”
“I’ll tell her,” Ian said. “But I don’t know that it will make any difference.”
It didn’t. Although she was only five, Emily knew her job, she knew her place in the family. “I’m okay, Mommy. If you and Maggie need to go somewhere, that’s fine. It’s okay. Ellie’s here.”
Her soft little voice broke Gwen’s heart. Children shouldn’t have to be that good.