“Fuck,” Aaron breathes and we hear it even where we stand. He hangs his head, resting his forehead against the doorjamb. Then he starts out onto the porch.
“I’ll get her,” Bess calls out suddenly, surprising us both. “Stay there, Aaron. I’ll get her.”
“No, Bess,” he says. “It’s still my job.”
“Well, you suck at it today,” she insists. She walks over and gets a bike for herself, mounts it, and starts off down the lane. Bess hasn’t been on a bike in years, so she wobbles for a moment and then straightens herself out.
I walk over and sit down on Aaron’s top step on his porch. He sits down next to me, resting his elbows on his knees, then drops his face into his hands. “There’s no way to make this any better,” he says.
“Nope,” I agree and shake my head.
“I did the best I could.”
“Yep. You did.”
He raises his head and looks at me. “Are you going to agree with everything I say?”
“Right now, you need it.”
He lets out a watery laugh and says, “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.” I give him a manly pat on the back and sit quietly with him, both of us staring down the lane toward where Sam and Bess have gone.
29
Bess
I’m pretty sure that Sam has no idea where she’s going. She’s pedaling so fast that I can’t keep up with her, but I can clearly see the tracks the bike tires are leaving in the soft sand of the dirt path.
Aaron and I have explored every part of this end of the lake, and I know there’s only one place out here that she could end up. This road ends soon at an old rickety dock that was a relic of the old campground that used to be here. It closed down years ago when the wells went dry, and the Jacobsons moved it to its present location.
They never did demolish the dock, though. They left it there and sometimes the kids use it for making out late at night. When we were younger, Mr. Jacobson had installed posts and a cable to block the road, a lot like the one that leads to the haunted house. But over the years, the posts had rotted out of the ground and he’d never replaced them. The area is now so overgrown that you get chewed to death by bugs just by coming here.
I swat at the mosquitoes that attack the back of my neck as I follow Sam’s tire tracks around the curve. Then I see her bike leaning against one of the broken-down posts that used to hold the cable. “Ouch!” I mutter as a biting fly lands on my arm and takes a bite. I’m going to be one big itching sore by the time I catch up with her.
I find her sitting on the end of the old dock, her feet dangling toward the water. The boards of the dock are dry and brittle, and many of them are cocked at odd angles. She’s going to end up with splinters. But what breaks my heart is how she’s huddled, sobbing softly to herself.
I carefully pick my way down the dock, trying to step on the more stable-looking boards. I sit down next to her and stare out over the water. If the weeds weren’t so overgrown and the bugs so bad on this side of the lake, this area would be as beautiful as the Jacobsons’ lots are. I slap at a bug that lands on my arm again, and I brush the carcass away with my palm. Still I say nothing.
She sits next to me, silently sobbing. I can feel her anguish, and I know that she’s feeling just as bad about what she said as she is about what she learned about her dad. She’s feeling guilty and sad and she doesn’t know how to recover from any of it.
“Did I ever tell you the story about the day you were born?” I finally say to her.
She sniffles and shakes her head, still huddled into herself like she’s making herself as small as she can.
“Your mom never told you?” I try to make my tone as conversational as possible, despite the fact that I know that this conversation will stay with her for the rest of her life.
“Nuh-uh,” she grunts with another sniffle as she shakes her head. “I don’t think so.” She lifts her hands and wipes her face.
I smile as I think of it. “It was a Wednesday night. Your dad called at two-oh-four in the morning. I remember the exact time because I was in bed, sleeping soundly, when the phone rang.”
She finally turns her head to look at me. “He called and woke you up?”
“He did.” A fish rolls in the lake right in front of us, rippling the water. “You were born at two-oh-two.” I laugh. “He waited two whole minutes before he picked up the phone.”
“Why did he call you?” she asks. Her voice is hesitant, but I can tell she’s curious.
“Because you had arrived and he was terrified.” I giggle lightly as I remember the tremble in his voice. “‘She’s here, Bess,’ he said to me. ‘She’s here and she’s absolutely perfect.’ I can still remember the quaver in his voice. He loved you from the moment he saw you for the first time.”
“What does quaver mean? And…why was his voice doing that?”
“It means shaky, unsteady. Nervous. And his voice quavered because he was in awe of you.” I nudge her leg with my fingertips. “He had waited for nine months, counting the days until you got here. He had painted the nursery, put together furniture, and he’d even gotten you a big stuffed giraffe for your room.”
“Bumper,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her tone.
I smile too. “Right. Bumper. That thing was huge.”
“I still have him.” She’s not crying now. She’s listening.
“Anyway, like I said,” I continue, “your dad called and he said, ‘She’s here, Bess. She’s here and she’s absolutely perfect.’ And I could hear it in his voice—” My own voice breaks because I can still remember how he sounded.
“Hear what?” She turns to face me a little, her tear-streaked face inquisitive.
“He was scared to death.” I laugh out loud and slap my leg. “All that time he’d been getting ready, making the nursery, preparing for you. But nobody had told him how it would feel when you got here. He said he felt like his heart was going to jump right out of his chest. ‘What have I done, Bess?’ he said to me. ‘What did I ever do to be worthy of this?’ And I could hear it in his voice. He was literally shaking.” I nudge her with my shoulder. “Your mom told me later that he was a complete mess, what with all the crying and everything.”
Sam puts out her hands and leans back on her extended arms. She’s taking all this in, and I’m glad she didn’t just shut me out.
“Your dad was so excited. You weighed eight pounds and two ounces when you were born. He assured me that you had all your fingers and all your toes. And that you didn’t have any, ah…extra appendages.” I lean down like I’m going to tell her a secret and drop my voice to a whisper. “Do I need to explain what extra appendage means? He was so sure you were going to be a boy! He already had a name picked out for you: Samuel.”
She bites her lips together like she’s trying not to laugh, but she says nothing.
“‘It’s a girl, Bess,’ he said to me. ‘It’s a little girl!’ And he said it with so much wonder and reverence in his voice that I knew whether you were a boy or a girl didn’t matter because he would be the best father ever.”