MARGOT COULDN’T BRING herself to go to the diner and face people, so she went home to forage in her fridge. As the truck bumped over the gravel drive of the McCready compound, she spotted Arlo waiting for her on her front porch. His ears perked forward and he hopped to his feet as she climbed out of the truck.
“Oh, no,” she said. “You just go home to Aunt Tootie. I don’t have time to lint-roll away dog hair. I only have an hour for lunch.”
Arlo whimpered and cocked his head to the side.
“Seriously, go,” Margot said, shooing him away with her hands. “Now.”
Arlo darted to the door and plunked his butt in the center of the frame.
“I will wait you out,” she said, leaning down and pointing a finger in his face. “I outlasted a shoe model who threatened not to walk in the Ladies Charity League Spring Fashion Show until she got a hyper-dry triple-shot soy cappuccino, because there’s no such thing. I can outlast a rescue mutt.”
Arlo yipped and licked at her finger.
Sighing, Margot turned her back on the dog and stared out at the sunlight flickering across the expanse of the lake. She hated to admit it, but her view was one of the things she enjoyed about living in Lake Sackett. In the mornings, she got up a few minutes early just to drink her coffee while watching the dragonflies dart across the surface. After dinner, she’d spent the evening on her porch, just staring out at still water purpled by twilight.
Margot glanced down the drive. She still didn’t know who had once lived in the yellow house with the dilapidated green roof. She hadn’t had time to ask anyone. She’d thought she would feel crowded and put-upon, living so close to the family. But Margot found it was a lot like living in her apartment building. She knew her family was close by, but everybody seemed to respect each other’s privacy. And there were times she was absolutely unnerved by the silence. She was used to the constant rumble of traffic and the wail of sirens—even in her relatively nice neighborhood. The lack of noise made her feel like her cabin was surrounded by a layer of Styrofoam.
But now, the noise in her head felt overwhelming, like she had an ocean between her ears, roaring and crashing. She couldn’t believe a simple lunch invitation had turned out so badly. It was a nightmare, all of her childhood insecurities, every question she’d asked herself about her father, all dredged up at once. She sank to the porch step, not caring when the seat of her pants suit landed on the dusty wood. Her mother had been right. Her father wasn’t a father. He wasn’t capable of that kind of responsibility, even sober. Linda was not a mother who hugged or even showed approval that often, but she’d done a loving thing in taking Margot away from here.
Arlo padded over to Margot and slipped his head under her arm and into her chest. She sighed, forgetting about dog hair, and combed her fingers against his neck. The warmth of his fur and his heartbeat under her hand, even with the doggy smell, were comforting. She relaxed around him, letting her face drop against the top of his head. For a brief moment, she let her eyes burn and water. She took a wobbly breath.
Why did missing one stupid lunch hurt so much? She’d had worse done to her by people she liked more. Why was she giving so much power to someone she barely knew? And why was she burying her face against dog fur?
“No,” she said, gently easing Arlo out of her lap. “No offense, Arlo, but no.”
She stood, shoving her door open. Arlo yipped and dashed into the house. “No! Arlo!”
Arlo hopped on the couch, made a couple of circles, and burrowed into a throw pillow. “You’re not staying.”
Arlo made a whining noise that sounded like a canine version of “That’s what you think.”
Margot crossed to the fridge, which had nothing green in it. Nothing. Not even mold. She groaned. “That’s it. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”
MARGOT DROVE DUFFY’S truck to the Food Carnival at the end of town. While Leslie and Tootie had been diligent about delivering casseroles to her door, Margot really needed to start stocking her own pantry. She couldn’t keep living on a diet entirely based on Velveeta and cream of chicken soup.
As she pulled into the parking lot, she reminded herself that she’d shopped in tiny bodegas while living in the city and she could make do with whatever she found on the shelves. And then she walked into the cheerfully lit shop, saw motor oil displayed right next to fresh fruit, and almost lost her nerve.
While there were huge pallets of sunblock, beer, and pool noodles, there were no ethnic foods beyond the pasta aisle. There was no organic produce. And when she asked for the health food section, the clerk directed her to a display of Flintstones vitamins. She was a little discouraged by these developments, but they weren’t nearly as concerning as the store’s use of Snacky the Clown as its mascot.
She stocked up on produce, almonds, and oatmeal and with apprehension turned toward the toiletries section. She’d brought half-full bottles of her prestige-brand toiletries to Lake Sackett, expecting them to hold out until she found a new job and moved on. But she was running low on basically everything, as the ridiculous heat had her showering twice a day. Between her dwindling funds and spotty Internet access, she was going to have to break down and buy . . . bargain brands. She fully expected her pampered blond locks to rebel and detach themselves on principle.
Margot was considering which overscented fruity body wash would offend her sensibilities the least when a girl around age five with a honey-blond ponytail ran full-tilt into her legs. The girl bounced off Margot and went sprawling across the floor and started crying. Margot glanced around, searching for a parent who would fix this. But most of the other shoppers were just staring at her as if she’d knocked a child to the floor on purpose.
“I don’t know what to do here,” Margot said, helping the girl to her feet. The little girl leaned her head back, opened her mouth, and let loose sobs that could have shattered the store’s front windows. Margot couldn’t help but notice the girl’s windblown hair and a very interesting outfit consisting of khaki shorts, a purple-and-orange-striped sweater, and pink rain boots with little green whales on them. Maybe she was one of those feral children you saw on the news? It would explain the fashion choices and the lack of a parent to soothe her out of her sobs. Margot awkwardly patted the little girl’s arms. “I don’t know how to deal with crying kids. Do I give you a Band-Aid? A hug? What’s going to make you feel better?”
Suddenly the girl stopped crying and her huge brown eyes popped open. “Candy.”
Margot’s own eyes narrowed, but there was a little quirk to her lips as she said, “Oh, you’re good.”
The little girl grinned and did not look one bit sorry. There was something familiar about that expression.
“June?”
“Daddy?” The girl’s head snapped left as Kyle Archer rounded the corner of the body wash display. He sagged with relief when he saw Margot crouched in front of his daughter. Margot quickly released June’s shoulders and stood, taking a step back from the girl.
Damn it. This was just not her day for uncomfortable interactions with fathers. Fathers. The little girl had called her truck-seat paramour “Daddy.” Margot’s stomach dropped. Where was the mother? She glanced down at Kyle’s ring finger, which was bare but still showed the faintest of tan lines. Not married, then. That was a relief.
Margot took a step back, staring at Kyle’s open smile. How could he look so happy, with his daughter in his arms, but so miserable when he was away from her? Was it a custody thing? Was he only cheerful when his daughter was around?
Kyle lifted the girl into his arms and leveled her with serious but not angry eyes. “Juniper Grace Archer, we’ve talked about this. You can’t run off on your own at the store.”
“Sorry, Daddy, I was boooooored,” June said, as if that explained abandoning her father in the grocery store and giving him a minor cardiac incident. Kyle turned his attention to Margot and lifted a dark-blond eyebrow.
Margot raised her hands in surrender. “I swear, I am not stalking you.”
He smirked. “That’s what the last girl who stalked me said.”
“I didn’t knock her down or anything. She ran around the corner and bounced off of me.”
“June, we’ve talked about that, too,” Kyle scolded.
Juniper shrugged. “It gets me around faster.”
Margot tried to back away slowly from the little domestic scene, but Kyle turned to her. “I’m sorry, I’m usually better at supervising my own kids. But my other daughter was picking out a shampoo, which is sort of a ‘wisdom of Solomon’ thing, and June got away from me.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding and trying to back away down the aisle. “All right, then, see you around.”
“Um, actually, I could use your help,” he said. “With the shampoo thing. You’re a woman.”
“Thank you for noticing,” she deadpanned.
“And you’re probably better at picking out this stuff than I am,” he said, his cheeks flushing under his beard.
“Why is it so hard to pick a shampoo?” she asked.
Kyle cleared his throat. “Well.”
An older girl, maybe seven or eight, stepped around the end display and into the aisle, looking highly disgruntled. Her hair was several shades darker than her sister’s. It was also several times larger than her sister’s, forming a sort of unintentional cloud of frizz around her head.
Margot flinched. “Oh.”
“Hazel tried a new shampoo this week because it smelled like One Direction is supposed to smell. Don’t ask me why that makes sense. It’s a girl thing and I can’t possibly understand. And it made her hair all flat and stringy-looking. So I got her a volumizing shampoo, which was obviously a mistake because she has naturally curly hair and the chemicals awoke something evil in it. We tried defrizzing shampoo and dry shampoo and it just keeps getting bigger. And then at school today, the static electricity from the other kids just made it angry . . .”
June tugged on Margot’s shirt. “We’re afraid it’s going to start sucking people in, like the Blob.”
Hazel made an indignant noise but moved behind her father, out of sight. Margot turned to Kyle, brows lifted.
“I should not have let them watch that vintage horror movie marathon,” he admitted.
Margot sighed. She felt deeply underqualified to handle this. But Hazel looked so miserable with her giant cloud of hair. And she just couldn’t let Kyle make this worse for his daughter before she went back to school. Hazel was already the principal’s kid, which probably made life at school hard enough.
“This is not a problem that can be solved with more shampoo,” Margot told him, leading the little family back into the shampoo-and-conditioner aisle. June climbed down from her father’s arms and tugged on Margot’s jean pocket as she walked. Margot carefully peeled her hand away and tucked it back into Kyle’s.
It was unsettling how quickly kids attached themselves to people they barely knew. She needed to help poor Hazel with her follicle emergency and then get away from Kyle and his kids and his soft, teasing lips as quickly as possible. Surely there had to be some nice local lady who could decipher Kyle’s dual personality and his girls’ personal hygiene issues. She just needed to make some sort of dignified exit and never leave work or home again, so these awkward encounters would stop.
Reasonable solution.
Margot searched for the best brand among the value labels and started handing Kyle products. “Deep conditioning, spray detangler, and a Wet Brush. And if that doesn’t work . . .”
Margot turned to Kyle with a hesitant expression on her face.
“I’m scared,” Kyle whispered.
“Do you have olive oil at home?”
Margot separated from the little family as soon as Hazel’s hair care regimen was selected. She didn’t even say good-bye. She just said, “All right, then! Good luck!” and disappeared like fog. She felt a little guilty being rude to children, but this breakdown of the sexy, brooding image she’d had of Kyle to the responsible school administrator to the guy picking out no-tears shampoo was too much for her to handle. Not because it destroyed her unreasonable expectations, but because she could picture that very easily—Kyle standing at the stove while the girls ran around the kitchen, waving their sticky hands near all the available surfaces. She shook that image out of her head. As adorable as Kyle’s baggage might have been, she was in no way prepared to deal with them. All she’d wanted was a nice, simple romp with the hot broody local. She didn’t want to know about his home life. She didn’t want to meet his adorable, follically challenged children.
The lump of unease in her belly turned to ice-cold disappointment as she grasped the full implications of Kyle having kids. It felt like a death of possibilities. She was not prepared for this kind of complication in her life. She was going to be leaving Lake Sackett in a few weeks, God willing. She did not have time to form any sort of attachment to a single father of two girls.
Unfortunately, that father of two girls managed to catch up to her as she was loading her groceries into the truck. Over his shoulder, she could see that June was already strapped into the booster seat inside what she realized now was a sensible, family friendly four-door truck. Hazel was climbing in after her.
Margot moved toward the driver’s-side door but couldn’t unlock it without being obvious about dodging him.
“Hey, I didn’t have a chance to say thank-you properly,” he said. “I really appreciate the help. Every time I think I have a handle on this whole ‘parenting daughters’ thing, something pops up and bites me on my ass. And Hazel struggles without her mom.”
“As someone with challenging hair, I sympathize with her plight,” Margot said.
Kyle cleared his throat. “So, um, this is . . .”
“Uncomfortable to the point of pain?”
“I was going to go with ‘a little awkward,’ and end it there,” Kyle countered, pursing his lips. There was a pause in the conversation. With the way Kyle was looking her over, his gaze appreciative, Margot thought that he might ask her out. And she was already coming up with a list of reasons why she couldn’t accept. But she didn’t have the opportunity to use any of them, because he just smiled, said, “Well, I’ll see you around!” and pushed his empty cart toward the corral.
Margot couldn’t help but bite back some discontent. Clearly the connection she’d felt with him in that brief moment of madness hadn’t meant nearly as much to him as it had to her. And that was a good thing, right? She didn’t need to get all tangled up with this man and his kids. It was already going to be messy enough leaving her own family behind in Lake Sackett.
Margot palmed her keys. Right. Good life choices. Minimal complications.
She yanked open her door and called over her shoulder, “So if you see me sometime in the next twenty-four hours, it’s not stalking. It’s a coincidence. An embarrassing and ill-timed coincidence.”
Kyle opened his driver’s-side door and smirked. “That’s what the last girl who stalked me said.”
AFTER THE MISSED lunch debacle, Margot had planned to avoid her father. Stan had made his priorities clear. She needed to do the same. She just wanted to do her work, stay away from charming single fathers, then find a job and get out of town before she had to deal with Stan again. She got really good at tailoring her schedule to avoid seeing him at work, orbiting around the funeral home on a “Stan free” track.
Of course, her scruffy cousin blew that plan all to hell at the earliest possible opportunity just a few days later. Duffy insisted on showing her the “other side” of the business by taking her fishing. She’d pictured waking up around nine, going to the Rise and Shine, and then spending an hour flicking some bait over the water just to say they did it. She did not expect him to show up at her cabin before dawn, throw some worn boots at her, and drag her into his truck.
In most cases, being dragged from bed into anyone’s truck would be problematic.
“I’m reporting this as a kidnapping as soon as I’m awake,” she said through a yawn, leaning her forehead against his cool passenger window. “I have memorized the number for the Georgia State Patrol.”
“You’ll never get a cell signal out here,” he reminded her.
“I’ll mail them a letter,” she countered, her face smashed against the glass. “On very official-looking paper.”
But when she woke up she didn’t have time or stationery with which to report her cousin for multiple felonies, because she was sitting on a bench against the weathered red exterior of the Snack Shack. The water lapped loudly against the dock, occasionally splashing hard enough that droplets launched up from the surface and landed near her feet. She started, shrieking a little bit, grateful that she hadn’t rolled off the bench and into the water. “Duffy! Did you carry me down the dock while I was asleep? That is wrong!”
But Duffy didn’t answer. She couldn’t even see him, only the peachy orange of sunrise peeking over the horizon. The water lapped gently under the dock, its glittering surface making Margot squint even behind her sunglasses. Margot groaned and rubbed her hand over her face. “I’m going to shave his head while he sleeps.”
“Here, hon, this will perk you right up.”
Margot jerked again. Her eyes flew open and she found the tiny form of Bob’s wife, Leslie, blocking the rising sun. “Aunt Leslie? What are you doing here so early? Did Duffy kidnap you, too?”
A compact pixie with fading blond hair and a penchant for floppy straw hats, Leslie passed her an enormous thermal mug. “You have to wake up pretty early to beat the fishermen to the water. And I have to have the food ready for them. Now, you take a big swig of that. Bob told me the brew was hard on your system, so I mixed in some milk and sugar, like we fix for the kids.”
Margot rolled the oversweet substance on her tongue and winced. “You give this to children?”
“Well, not Nate,” Les said, shaking her head. She pressed a grease-spotted paper bag into Margot’s hands. “I’ve gotta get to work. Here, hon, you tell Duffy I made these for your breakfast.”
Margot sniffed the bag. It smelled like at least two hours on an elliptical. “What is it?”
“Bacon wrapped around a sausage, stuffed with cheese, dipped in egg batter and deep-fried. I call it a Breakfast Stick.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“The gravy’s in the spare thermos!” Les called brightly, walking back into the shack.
Margot heard a rumbling and turned to see Duffy guiding what looked like a floating front porch toward her. According to the bright red paint scrawled across the bow, it was called Sarah Jane. He waved cheerfully. “Hello, the dock!”
“Hello, wide flat boat thing!” she called back.
“This is a pontoon boat,” he told her as he deftly steered it parallel to the dock without colliding with it. “I figured it would be a little bit more your speed than one of our bass rigs.”
“You would be correct,” she said as he helped her step on board. She was pleased that the boat didn’t give under her feet. It was a nice stable surface, not at all tippy. “Here, Aunt Leslie gave us breakfast.”
Duffy looked into the bag and grinned. He called over Margot’s shoulder, “Oh, um, hey, Les? We’re gonna need enough for two more.”
“Is Frankie coming with us?” Margot asked, stowing her purse under one of the seat cushions and flopping onto the wide, couchlike seats.
“Not exactly,” Duffy said, flushing behind his gingery beard.
“Duffy, what did you do?” Margot turned to follow his eye line and saw her father walking on the dock with Aunt Donna at his side.
Aunt Donna looked ready for camping in the outback, wearing a khaki tank top with a green bandanna knotted around her neck. Her frizzled reddish hair blew in a curly cloud around her face, occasionally falling over a pair of black aviator sunglasses. She was sun-burnished and blowsy but looked perfectly at ease as she jumped onto the boat.
Seeing the uncomfortable expression on Margot’s face, Stan dropped the large Coleman cooler gently to the dock. A chubby Jack Russell terrier with gray-white hairs streaking out from its muzzle trotted down the dock, wearing a little doggy life vest.
Huffing at Stan until he stepped aside, the dog leaped gracefully onto the boat and hopped up on the seat nearest Donna. It turned in a circle until it found the best napping-in-the-sunshine position and dropped to its stomach.
“Look, I can just stay here,” Stan said as Donna tossed a bag full of gear to her son. “Don’t feel much like fishing anyway.”
“No, no, you stay, I’ll go,” Margot said, grabbing at the cushion that hid her bag. “You’ll probably get more out of this trip than I would.”
“No, the whole point of going out this morning was to teach you about fishing,” Stan protested as Leslie dropped a grease-spotted bag into Duffy’s waiting hands. “And I don’t want to mess that—”
“Really, it’s no trouble, I’ll just head back to the cabin and catch up on chores.”
“Now, listen here, if your cousin wants to take you fishing, I’m not gonna interfere.”
Donna turned, hands on hips. “Get your ass on the boat, Stan.”
“But—”
Donna lowered her sunglasses and glared at Stan. He threw his arms into the air. “Fine!”
While Margot sat, feeling pretty useless, the other three moved about the boat with practiced ease, securing the canvas screen overhead, prepping fishing rods, and most important, distributing the Breakfast Sticks. The terrier popped its head up, sniffing with hopeful eyes, but Donna scratched behind its ears and dug a treat out of her fishing vest.
“No Breakfast Sticks for you, Willie,” she said, though Margot noted her no-nonsense aunt didn’t have a cutesy dog voice. Her dog voice was just as exasperated as her people voice. “I’m not gonna have the vet fussing at me over your cholesterol again.”
“Willie’s been fishing with Mom and her charters for more than ten years,” Duffy told her. “He’s enjoyed a fair share of Breakfast Sticks in his lifetime.”
“Do the charter clients mind sharing their boat with a dog?” Margot asked.
“Anybody who does mind gets tossed off my boat,” Donna said, peering over her aviators at her niece.
Margot raised her hands in surrender. “Understood.”
Duffy revved the engine while Stan cast off a line. Margot just sat there and smeared SPF 30 sunscreen on her face and throat. Leslie stuck her head out of the Snack Shack and waved them off with a big grin on her face. Behind her, trucks were already pulling into the marina lot, eager for coffee and bait and deep-fried breakfast.
“Here you go.” Donna plopped a floppy canvas fisherman’s hat on top of Margot’s head. “You’re gonna need more than sunscreen to protect that fair skin of yours, Big City.”
“Actually, I’ve always tanned pretty easily,” Margot said. “I just haven’t been outdoors much lately, so I’m kind of fish-belly pale.”
Donna scoffed. “Stan’s the same way. Get him near a strong lightbulb and he’s brown as a walnut.”
Margot glanced at her father’s craggy face. He nodded and shrugged, seeming pleased that Donna had noted a similarity between him and his daughter. Margot cleared her throat. “So where are you taking me?”
“One of my favorite spots,” Donna assured her as Duffy glided the boat easily across the water. “Crappie galore. You’ll love it.”
Donna handed her one of the rods she’d brought, with the McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop logo printed on the reel. She explained the mechanics of casting, when to release the tab on the reel, how to know when to start turning the spinning handle, and then dropped it into Margot’s palms. “Trust me, any fool can use this.”
Margot grimaced. She had a feeling Donna would have no problem telling her when she was being a fool. Donna slapped a plastic container of minnows on the seat next to her. “If you want to fish on my boat, you’re gonna have to bait your own hook. Put that college education of yours to good use.”
Margot lifted the lid of the minnow container and blanched at the poor, defenseless feeder fish. “Oddly enough, fish murder was not covered in my major.”
Margot was well aware of her own disgusted expression as she struggled to slip the hook through the bait. She didn’t even look up as she felt her father’s weight settle next to her.
“Don’tcha know anything about baitin’ a hook?” Stan asked, glancing up to make sure Donna wasn’t watching while he demonstrated the proper skewering technique.
“Well, I didn’t spend a lot of time fishing as a kid. Or any time, really,” she said, subtly shifting away from him on the seat. At least, she hoped it was subtle.
“Well, what did ya do?”
Margot stared at him. After the lunch debacle, he didn’t deserve to know anything about her childhood. She wasn’t going to answer. But then Donna started giving her the scary, pointed glare and Margot said, “Piano, which I was terrible at. Ballet, at which I was a bit better. French lessons. Horseback riding, though I never got to a competition level beyond our country club.”
“It figures you’d have that sort of thing up there in Chicago.”
“I was lucky. Gerald wanted to make sure I had all the same extracurricular opportunities as my classmates.”
“Was that your mom’s husband?”
Margot nodded. “They married when I was still very young.”
“Was he good to ya?” Stan asked. “This Gerald, was he decent to ya?”
“He’s a very decent man. A doctor. He’s in England right now, doing a teaching fellowship at a medical school there. We haven’t spoken in a long time, but when we do, it’s very civil.”
“Well, at least there’s that,” Stan said.
Margot swallowed, suddenly uncomfortable. She didn’t want to compare and contrast father figures. She didn’t appreciate Duffy’s meddling. She didn’t appreciate being trapped on a boat with her estranged father. Surely this was some sort of scenario designed by Alfred Hitchcock. Maybe she could swim to shore.
She tried to focus on the passing scenery. She didn’t know much about lakes, despite growing up near one of the largest in the world. But she recognized signs of drought when she saw them. The shore was marked by at least two feet of baked earth. Mud-coated trash lay exposed in the shallows. It was like seeing a body of water without its toupee, sad and lesser and sort of desperate.
“Shouldn’t you have a tour booked this morning?” she asked Duffy over the noise of the engine.
Duffy flushed again, glancing at his mom. “Yeah, well, the doctor I had booked backed out at the last minute.”
“Duff, it wasn’t your fault.” Aunt Donna’s voice softened for the first time since Margot had arrived in Lake Sackett. “The doctor canceled his whole weekend when he saw the ‘cabin’ he booked. That idiot Maybelline Mathis has been renting out the pottin’ shed behind her house and calling it a guest cabin. She puts fake pictures on the rental web site. It was bound to catch up to her eventually.”
“It’s been happenin’ a lot,” Duffy grumped. “It’s the fourth cancellation I’ve had in the last couple of weeks. People are losing their patience with the town. The water’s too low and the rental cabins are gettin’ shabby. And the owners can’t afford to fix ’em up again because the renters cancel. I don’t know how much longer we’re gonna be able to keep this up.”
“Well, that’s a real cheerful sentiment for this early in the morning, son,” Donna retorted, her flinty tone restored. “Moanin’ over loomin’ financial disaster is just what I wanted as a side for my Breakfast Stick.”
Duffy jerked his shoulders as he slowed the boat and anchored it about twenty yards from the shore of a little alcove surrounded by fallen trees. Stan was largely unaffected by this exchange, his big basset-hound eyes focused on his daughter. “And your mama, was she finally happy in the big city?”
“What do you mean by that?” Margot asked, standing on steady legs and moving to the starboard side of the boat. Watching Duffy’s and Donna’s movements, she plopped her minnowed hook into the water.
“I mean, she was never happy here. I just want to know was she finally happy, movin’ to a big city, marryin’ a doctor. Being away from this place. Was she happy?”
Margot frowned. Her mother hadn’t been built for happiness. Surely, having been married to her, Stan knew that. Resentment rose up in her throat, hot and bitter. She noticed her father hadn’t mentioned his drinking this time. What was Stan looking for? Did he want her to take away his guilt? Was she supposed to convince him he’d done the right thing by doing nothing to get Margot back? What gave him the right to ask these things?
“Margot?” Stan said, following her to the side of the boat. Margot stared across the water, determined to ignore him.
In the distance, she saw the silhouette of a beautiful wooden sailboat, the old-fashioned kind you saw in aftershave commercials. It slipped smoothly across the water, and Margot was struck with a sort of envious longing. Stan was still standing next to her, asking her questions, but she managed to block him out, focusing on the distant ship.
What would it be like to move so quickly and quietly? She’d known plenty of people with yachts on Lake Michigan, but they’d been more mini cruise ships, used for parties and not much else. This boat looked like it was flying. She longed to stand on that deck and slide so easily into the wind. But then again, anyplace seemed preferable to where she was standing, being interrogated by her father.
The sailboat veered closer, and suddenly Margot pulled her fishing hat over her face and slumped down. Kyle Archer, windblown and handsome, was sitting at the rudder and wearing a life vest that should have made him as dumpy as she felt in her floppy hat and flotation device. But it didn’t. He was gorgeous. Damn it. And he was smiling, his face angled down as he talked to someone slumped against the hull. A long brown ponytail flapped in the breeze over the edge of the highly polished wood.
Her first thought was girlfriend, and she was surprised by the spike of jealousy that flared in her belly. She didn’t get jealous. A man proved himself unworthy or unavailable, she moved on. But the idea of Kyle sailing around with that happy expression on his face because of another woman, it made—
The brunette head popped over the hull and Margot saw that it was his daughter Hazel, she of the challenged follicles. Somehow, that was worse. This was a man with a family. His attention would always be divided. He would never have time for spontaneous moments together because he would have to deal with babysitters and pickup schedules. His daughters would always come first, as they should. She didn’t think she would want him as much as she did if he put them second.
A little puttering motor in the distance drew Margot’s attention away from the sailboat and its baffling owner. She was struck by the image of an African American man in his fifties aiming for their boat at what seemed to be ramming speed. He wore a Braves cap that looked like he’d had it since boyhood, but his boat looked showroom new. As he drew closer, Margot recognized him as the man Donna had been yelling at on the dock days before. He turned the boat just as he killed the engine, meaning he splashed their pontoon as he skidded to a drifting halt.
“Donna McCready!” he yelled. “I know you’re not poachin’ my territory.”
“I don’t see your name on it, Fred Dodge!” she yelled back.
Margot was grateful for the interruption of her less loud but more awkward conversation. She would much rather watch her aunt Donna yell at someone who was not her.
Stan and Duffy seemed more exasperated than worried by the exchange, sitting back on the cushions of the pontoon and crossing their arms. So Margot sat back, too—in a spot as far away from Stan as possible—to enjoy the show as Fred yelped, “Woman, you know I’ve been fishin’ that spot since we were in high school!”
Margot watched the verbal fencing between her aunt and Mr. Dodge with a little smile on her lips. She couldn’t help but notice the way Donna’s face flushed as she parried and shouted. Mr. Dodge’s wide brown eyes blazed as he wagged his finger at her aunt. They were into each other. In a big way.
“She’s right,” Duffy said dryly. “I signed the territory agreement as a witness. Your exclusive spot is over on Deer Tick Bay.”
Fred pursed his lips. “Oh . . . right. Well, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re in my spot here, Donna!”
“Fine,” Donna bit out. She stomped over and started the motor, then moved the boat ten yards down the shore. “Happy now?”
“Overjoyed!” Fred shouted back. He started his engine and guided his boat away. But he glanced over his shoulder to see if Donna was watching.
Margot grinned. Fred had it bad for Donna—scary, loud Donna. They would be the most prickly, adorable couple, if they ever stopped yelling at each other.
Triumphant in clinging to her favorite fishing spot, Donna dropped her hook in the water and stretched across her seat, long legs propped on the bow. Stan had turned his back on everybody and commenced fishing. Duffy occupied himself with eating his Breakfast Stick. Margot watched her bobber, well, bobbing, for almost an hour, with no change. And she realized that she’d missed very little, not going on fishing trips as a child. It was hot and too sunny and too quiet and everything smelled like dirt and pennies and frustration. And she’d forgotten her cell phone on her nightstand when Duffy abducted her, so this was basically her nightmare.
Margot huffed out a breath and pulled her hat over her face, hoping it would muffle her frustrated groan.
“What are you doin’, girl?” She pulled her hat back to see Stan staring at her, his brow furrowed.
She cleared her throat. “Um, nothing, just trying to keep the sun out of my eyes,”
“Well, that’s no way to do it.” Stan set his root beer aside and reached up to shape the brim over her face. He tapped her nose with his index finger. “And you should put some zinc on that nose before ya get burnt. You couldn’t stand having a sunburn when you were little. Used to carry a jar of Noxzema around the house, telling everybody you were dyin’.”
Margot glanced up into her father’s face. He was gazing down at her, a little smile playing on his lips as he relived this memory. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the sailboat pass. She tipped her head down to avoid eye contact. And Stan’s hands froze, millimeters from her cheeks.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and shuffled away to the other side of the boat.
And that tension that had been building up inside Margot snapped. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me. You had a chance to get to know me and you left me hanging. How am I supposed to trust you enough to try now? These memories that you have of me that you keep bringing up? I don’t remember anything like that. And you asking me all of these questions, it’s not going to make me remember. And I can’t change it. It is what it is. I can’t tiptoe around your feelings because I have no idea what happened between you and my mother. And it’s not my job to make you feel better about it, either way.”
“Well, what am I supposed to think?” he demanded. “Your mama ran off without a word. I don’t hear from you for years—tens of years! And then you show up out of the blue after all this time and I’m supposed to, what? Say ‘Thank you for deciding to show up’? I didn’t expect to see you again. And you don’t get why I would be too intimidated to just go to lunch with you the other day?”
“Oh, I have a lot of things to say to you on the subject of showing up, if you’d like to start a dialogue,” she said, smiling with so much acid, it could dissolve the bottom of the boat.
“See, that’s why I can’t even have a conversation with you. You talk like a damn robot.”
“Don’t curse at me!” she shot back.
He crossed his arms over his chest, eyes narrowed. “Yep, there’s your mama in you.”
Margot yelled, “You do not talk about my mother!”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t say! I’m your father!”
“You haven’t done anything to deserve the title of father! You might as well have been a sperm donor for all I knew from you!”
For a moment, Margot didn’t know whether Stan was going to slap her or burst into tears. Having been raised by two passive-aggressive cold fish, she couldn’t remember seeing such strong emotions fighting it out on a person’s face. No one in the family had ever mentioned Stan having a nasty temper, even when he drank. But had she pushed him so far that he would lash out like that? Was it sick that she wanted to know? Maybe she was just some giant psychological cliché, pushing at her parent’s boundaries to see what she could get away with. Therapy would probably be a good idea, once she was living outside of the Lake Sackett gossip zone.
Stan glanced down at his clenched hands and seemed horrified, backing away from her and putting several feet of space between them. A tiny flicker of guilt fluttered to life inside her, and she told herself it was natural to feel bad about making anyone hurt that much. It had nothing to do with who Stan was or any feelings she had about him. Not wanting to hurt another human being only proved Margot wasn’t a complete sociopath.
“Well, this is fun.” Donna spat, making a sour face at Duffy. “ ‘Take ’em fishing,’ you said. ‘Put ’em on a boat where they can’t get away from each other,’ you said. ‘They’ll have to bond eventually,’ you said.”
Duffy threw his hands up in the air in a helpless gesture. Stan crossed the boat, sitting as far away from Margot as possible. The baleful silence between them lasted for hours, until Donna and Duffy caught their fill. Stan was clearly off his game, catching only a handful. Margot, predictably, caught nothing.
Seriously, why did people put themselves through this and call it a hobby? Why were there so many movies, books, magazines, TV shows dedicated to sitting still and staring at water? She resorted to making lists in her head to keep herself sane—groceries she needed to shop for, contacts she still needed to make in her job search, excuses to give to Duffy so she never had to go fishing again. She almost wept with relief when her cousin yanked the anchor from the mucky bottom and motored the pontoon boat back toward the family marina. Stan kept his back to her up until the moment the boat bumped against the dock, and frankly, that was the only bright spot to her morning.
“Well, that was fun,” Donna said dryly as Stan moved with more speed than anyone could have expected from him and leaped onto the dock. He stormed toward the parking lot without a word, gear in hand. “Damn fool.”
“Aunt Donna, thank you for taking me fishing,” Margot said politely as Duffy helped her step off the boat. She whirled on her cousin and pointed a finger in Duffy’s face. “You. Dead to me.”
Duffy poked his bottom lip out in a pout so pathetic, she added, “For at least two days.”
The pout turned into a smile, so she felt compelled to smack the back of his fluffy head and snatch the truck key from the carabiner that secured it to his fishing vest. “And you’re riding home with your mother.”
“I deserve that,” Duffy conceded.