“It’s almost winter,” she reminds me. In late fall, she always closes the cabin at the lake, has it winterized, and lets it sit until spring.
“Gran,” I say, the weight of the day suddenly pressing down on me, “is it okay with you?”
“If you need the cabin, Abigail,” she says, “you can have the cabin. Use it as long as you like. I’ll call the Jacobsons and let them know they should be on the lookout for you.” The Jacobsons own the complex where the cabin is located.
“Just for a week or two.”
“Abigail,” she says softly, “take all the time you need.”
So I start the car and head toward Lake Fisher, which is almost an hour from here. When I get close, I stop at a local tackle shop and buy a few t-shirts branded with Lake Fisher logos, some underwear, and some flannel pajama bottoms. I don’t need much. It’s not like I’m going to be at the cabin for very long. I just need a place to lick my wounds.
3
Ethan
As I cut through the last piece of wood from the fallen tree that had been blocking the dirt road, Jake, the man who owns the campground where I’m employed, motions with a slice of his hand across his neck for me to turn off my saw. I immediately turn it off and lift my foot from atop the tree, where I had been propping for balance. I pull my noise-cancelling ear protection off and let it hang around my neck. I arch my brows at him, without saying anything, as the silence of the day falls like a curtain around us.
One of the many things that I like about Jake is that he doesn’t ask me a lot of questions. He gives me work to do, and then he lets me go and do it. I’ve been here for almost a month, ever since the campground closed down after Labor Day. I’d run into Jake at the tackle shop. He’d heard about the bad turn my life had taken and he’d offered me a job I couldn’t refuse.
I like it here, and I don’t want to do anything to mess it up.
Jake laughs when my little duck runs up and quacks in his direction. “That thing is like an attack dog,” he says.
“Oh, he’s friendly enough,” I reply.
He’s actually a lot of company. If anyone had told me I’d one day be raising a duck, of all things, I’d have called them crazy. The day after I arrived at Lake Fisher and pitched my tent, I’d woken up when the sun rose and walked down to the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I’d seen a red fox streak by me with a dead duck in its mouth. Or at least I’d assumed it was dead. The duck hung limply from between the fox’s jaws.
The fox had run into the woods, and I’d looked around, trying to figure out where it had come from. I’d walked around the water’s edge, in the tall weeds where the ducks like to roost. I’d found the nest and taken a deep breath. It had been filled with eggs, but by the time I’d arrived, they were all mashed and broken and empty, and the parent duck was obviously going to be breakfast.
I’ve always loved nature, but I really hate it when nature doesn’t love me back. I don’t care who you are—it’s hard to look into a nest of broken eggs and know that the ducklings are dead. But I’d seen that one egg was resting off to the side of the nest. It had been pushed to the side and was just lying abandoned in the weeds.
I picked it up and lifted it to my ear. It made a little cheeping sound, and I’d held it gently in my hand to stare at it. There was a tiny little pinprick where the shell had been broken, but it was otherwise intact. Something had obviously been moving and was still alive in there, so I’d stuck the egg in my shirt pocket and walked back toward camp.
The next day, the duck had hatched. For a couple of days, I’d carried the duckling around in my shirt pocket to keep it warm, but then it had started to want to walk around and toddle all over the place, chasing after me.
The little fella is pretty protective, too. Hence the honking he