it was late and the drive had zapped all of the energy out of me. But I can unpack later, when the sun is down and the water isn’t calling me. I make my way down the little hallway (also covered in brown wood paneling) and into the kitchen. The kitchen in Lake House A is a fraction of the size of our kitchen at home. It’s what Mom calls a postage stamp, tucked into a corner across from the little dining room and living room. The kitchen and dining room look out onto the yard and the neighboring house—Lake House B—and the living room has a row of windows that look out over the kidney bean–shaped lake.
Mom is unpacking bags and boxes, setting our toaster and a few pans onto the little counter—apparently all of us were a little lazy when we got in later than usual last night. Two months is too long for garage-sale pots and pans, Mom said the second summer we came here. She swore in the kitchen a lot that year. That summer, it was mostly just her and me. Mom working on her stained glass, and me turning into an almost-literal fish. We came up as soon as school let out and Mom had been set free from her classroom. Dad came up for a few sporadic weeks, and most weekends. That year, Lake House B was occupied by a nice older couple, who sat on their porch and brought freshly baked cookies out to the bonfire at night. The Wortmans.
I’m about to hit the door when Mom’s voice stops me. “Hey.” I pause, hoping I haven’t missed my chance at a clean break from unpacking, but knowing I have. “Can you run out and get me a few things from the store?”
“Big or little?”
“Little,” Mom clarifies.
“Sure.” Better to get out of here than to get roped into unpacking boxes. Mom packs like we’re never leaving here. In reality, I think I could survive with my swimsuit and a towel. And my paints. Maybe a small library of books. Okay, I need a few things. But still not as many as Mom.
Dad looks up at me from where he’s hunched over a box in the dining room. “Don’t forget,” he says, giving me a wink. Dad’s here for almost two weeks before he has to check in at the office for a few days, and then mostly he’ll be here, working remotely, like he has for the last five years or so. I glance out the window to where our little boat is already tied alongside the dock that juts out into the still water. Mom hates driving the boat, but Dad and me, we’ve always lived out on the water, the wake misting our arms, wind burning our cheeks. Driving it still makes me nervous though, and I usually opt to let someone else do it. Boats steer funny; they’re not like cars, which turn exactly when you want them to. Asher says I think too much to drive a boat properly. As if thinking is ever a bad thing.
Down the road from us, there’s a tiny convenience store called The Little Store—its actual name, I swear—that also doubles as one of the town’s two pizza places. It’s dark, like the walls of our house; like the mossy insides and writhing bodies inside the white container of worms my father sends me to retrieve on the first day of vacation every year. When I was twelve, I would ride my pink bike—balancing the plastic container precariously on my handlebars the whole way home.
Now, I steal Dad’s car keys from the little nail by the front door, and give a quick “I’ll be back” as the screen door slams behind me. Through the open kitchen windows I can still hear the rustle of paper bags as Mom unpacks a week’s worth of groceries from the local market twenty minutes away, where she grumbles about everything costing twice as much as at home.
I walk alongside the house, down the little cement sidewalk that runs to the gravel driveway. Straight ahead of me is the monstrosity—as my parents call it—that is Nadine and Charlie’s house. They own Lake House A and B, and until two years ago, they also owned four more tiny shoebox rentals, before they tore them down to build their dream house. Technically, this place is called Five Pines Resort, but with two houses left to rent it hardly qualifies, if you