Second Chance Summer

“More or less what?” my father asked, walking into the kitchen. He was holding the dog tucked in the crook of his arm and he looked a little rumpled, the way he always did when he woke up from his nap. He had also stopped dressing as though he was going to be called into the office at any moment, and today was wearing an American Bar Association T-shirt with his khakis. Without meaning to, I looked behind him to the calendar on the fridge, and saw that we had somehow ended up in the middle of June. Like every year, the summer was moving much too quickly—but I now had more of a reason to need it to slow down than just not wanting to go back to school.

“The corn,” my mother said, bringing me back to the present moment as she turned down the heat on one of the burners.

“Oh, shucks,” my father said, his pun expression spreading over his thin face. I smiled, and it looked like my mother was trying not to. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, with mock contrition, “was that too corny? Personally, I thought it was a-maize-ing.”

“Enough,” my mother said, shaking her head, even though she was laughing. “We need to get these burgers on the grill.” She left the kitchen, brushing my father’s arm lightly with her fingers as she passed, and walked onto the porch, where I could hear her telling Warren to get a move on.

“And how was your day?” my dad asked, turning to me. “Did you do great things?”

I smiled at that, pretty sure that serving people sodas and fries didn’t count. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “But I did get these.” I crossed to the table and handed him one of the movie night posters. “What do you think?” I asked, uncharacteristically nervous as I watched him reading it.

“Did you pick the movie?” my dad asked, his voice sounding a little hoarse.

“I did,” I said, and my father nodded, his eyes not meeting mine, but still on the poster. “You said it was your favorite,” I said after a minute, when he still hadn’t spoken. “And that you’d never seen it on the big screen…”

My dad cleared his throat and looked up at me. “Thanks, kid,” he said. He looked back at the poster. “This is great. I can’t believe you did this for me.”

I nodded, then stared down at the kitchen floor tiles. What I couldn’t somehow bring myself to say was all I could think about—that I had done it because I loved him and wanted to make him happy, and I had wanted him to see his favorite movie again. But implicit in that was what was staring me in the face every time I looked at the calendar—that this would probably be the last time he would see it. That it would, most likely, be one of the last movies he ever saw. I swallowed hard before I felt like I could speak again. “And,” I said, trying to keep my voice upbeat, “Warren has a date to the movie.”

“Does he now?” my dad asked. He jostled the dog in his arm. “Does that mean he’ll stop tormenting this poor thing?”

“Let’s ask him,” I said, heading out of the kitchen. My father followed behind me out to the porch where Gelsey was now stretching, her foot up on the porch railing, and her head bent toward her knee at an angle that, no matter how many times I’d seen it, always made me wince.

“Shoulders back,” my mother said, and I saw Gelsey make the correction. My dad crossed over to sit next to Warren, who appeared to still be holding the same ear of corn that I’d left him with. I couldn’t help but notice that my dad looked a little winded by the trip from the kitchen to the porch, that he already needed to rest from it. He settled the dog, who seemed more than happy to just be toted around in the crook of his arm, and smiled at my brother.

“So I understand you have a date,” he said, startling Warren, who turned red and finally started shucking the corn.

“Really?” my mother asked, smiling at Warren, as she joined my dad, sitting on the arm of his chair. “Since when?”

“Since Taylor asked her out for him,” Gelsey piped up as she straightened up from her stretch.

“What?” my mother asked, frowning, and I laughed and crossed over to help my brother with the corn while he began to recount the story. And as I sat there and listened, chiming in when necessary, it occurred to me that we had somehow never done this back home—just hung out, talking over details of our lives. If we’d been at home, my father would have been at work, and the three of us would have no doubt been doing various activities. And despite the circumstances that had brought us here, I couldn’t help being glad for just a moment that we were sharing this together, as a family, at last.

Chapter twenty-six

I COULDN’T SLEEP. THIS SEEMED TO BE THE THEME OF THE summer, as I found myself lying awake for hours every night, even when I’d worked all day and was exhausted and should, by all rights, have fallen fast asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. But whenever I lay down, I would find myself tossing and turning for hours, my thoughts keeping me awake. It just seemed like ever since we’d arrived in Lake Phoenix, I was constantly being confronted with all the things that I’d done wrong and had been trying to avoid thinking about for the last five years. And it was always at night, when I couldn’t escape them, that they took up residence in my head, refusing to go away.

What was keeping me up tonight, oddly enough, was the dog. There was something in Henry’s reaction to hearing he’d just been left behind that had stuck with me. Because as much as I’d wanted to demonize the renters for leaving their dog behind, it was basically what I’d been doing for years now—running away or quitting whenever things got hard. I’d just never had to deal with the reality that this came with a cost. In fact, most of the time, I’d done my very best to avoid ever having to confront the consequences of my actions. But Murphy was the living proof that leaving something or someone was never just free and easy.

When I couldn’t take it any longer, I rolled out of bed and pulled on a sweater, figuring that some fresh air might help, or at least clear my head a little. I tiptoed down the hall and let myself out through the screened-in porch. I didn’t bother with shoes, and just stepped barefoot out into the grass.

It was a gorgeous night, the moon huge in the sky, and just as huge reflected on the surface of the lake. There was a little bit of a chill in the air, a light breeze that ruffled the leaves, and I pulled my sweater a little tighter around me as I headed down to the dock. It wasn’t until I’d walked down the steps that I noticed the dock wasn’t empty. This wasn’t that unusual—I’d noticed Kim and Jeff out there one night, each holding pieces of paper, pacing around the dock, apparently trying to brainstorm. I slowed down as I squinted, trying to make out who was sitting on the edge of the dock. Then the figure turned slightly to the left and I saw that it was Henry.