Twelve. You’ve Got a Friend

TWELVE

You've Got a Friend

Maren

Of all Fost's things, I've left his bedroom dresser to tackle last because it feels too personal. Especially knowing he moved to cabin fourteen the last few years of his life. In my initial search, I cracked open the drawers and saw they were overflowing with personal items. Fost didn't have any family and this is all technically mine, but part of me wanted to toss the whole thing, leaving its secrets intact.

But that feels disrespectful to someone who meant the world to me.

Instead, I amble over to Fost's place, crunching through leaves, Rogers and a six-pack of Fost's favorite beer in tow, on a sunny Sunday afternoon in early October.

I let us in, cracking open the heavy curtains I'd picked up recently, and opening a few windows as well. It's chilly, but the lingering smell of dust and disuse still covers the walls. I might be sad, but I'm not a masochist.

I put some Carole King on, because Fost told me she sang straight from the soul and he dug that. I crack open a beer, still cold from the lodge, and grimace as the first sip goes down.

Gross.

The second is moderately better.

As Carole croons, I make my way to the bedroom. It's really only the top drawer that's full of personal items. The others contained clothing that was donated to Goodwill ages ago, according to Donna. But the top drawer is where he kept his life.

I take a deep breath and pull it open, spending the next hour sipping disgusting cheap beer and letting Carole King and Fost make me cry. There are gift receipts, ticket stubs, and birthday cards. An address book, overflowing with loose papers stuffed between the bound pages. Photos upon photos upon photos. Some are black-and-white, some are sepia, and some are full color. A few have me in them at various points of my childhood… toothless, sunburnt, all legs, and moody. Every stage captured in a neat little stack. I get to the end of the pile and there's a piece of loose-leaf paper, folded in thirds. I recognize his familiar scrawl.

(please add to will and testament)

For Maren Laughlin,

You brought this old man sunshine in his twilight years. I'll never be able to thank you for that, but maybe this will be the push you've been dreaming of. Be your own boat daddy.

Love,

Fost

I laugh so hard I cry, and then I cry some more.

Six years before

I've been gone too long. I never meant for so many years to pass. My parents come back year after year. Most of my brothers and their families as well. I park my car, not even bothering to close the door behind me as I make my way to the shore.

I stand at the end of a too-rickety dock and my lids fall shut as I inhale deep into my lungs, capturing the first full breath I've had in what feels like years. A hot tear slips from under my eyelashes, and I don't stop it. It's joined by more, but I don't care. I don't even know why I'm crying. I'm not sad, exactly. My life is fine. More than, probably. Just… something about this place. It makes me feel right. I'm more myself here than anywhere else in the entire world. I should come back. I want to come back. I'm sure I could make something of myself up here, guiding and maybe working for a resort. It wouldn't be a lucrative living, but it'd be a good one.

Or a lonely one.

"Is that my girl?"

I suck in my breath and swipe the tears from my face, spinning, wide-eyed to face the shore.

"Fost?" I'm running toward him, his arms stretched wide to catch me, but I gentle the last few steps because he's not as sturdy as he used to be. I wrap my arms around his thin frame just as he squeezes me to his chest. He smells like sunshine, fish guts, and old man. He smells like home.

"Hey, kid, thought I heard you might be in town. But not until tomorrow?"

"I got off work early," I murmur into his shoulder. "And I couldn't wait one more minute."

"Well, I'm sure glad to see you."

"Come and sit with me," I say, pulling away and reaching for his arm. I lead him back out onto the dock and we sit on a bench at the end.

"How're the fish biting?" I ask, and with a glint in his rheumy eyes, he tells me.

"Don't think I haven't noticed how quiet you've been about your life, missy. Not to mention how many years you've stayed away. What gives?"

"Ugh." I tilt my head to his shoulder, wrapping my arm around his. "There's nothing to tell. I'm single because men are stupid, I like my job a lot, but it's not here, and I'm enjoying being the favorite aunt as all my brothers take on the challenge of procreating with gusto."

"There're men here who aren't stupid."

I shake my head, rolling it against him. "Sorry, I should have been more specific—men my age are stupid. There are plenty of old geezers around here who have grown out of their stupid phase, but I'm not looking for a boat daddy."

Fost snickers. "Boat daddy?"

"Sure. Like a sugar daddy, but with a nice fishing boat instead. Like a Ranger or a Skeeter, with a top-of-the-line trolling motor and GPS that you can mark and lock… I'm thinking red glitter."

"Are you interested in the boat or the daddy?"

I sigh. "That's the question, isn't it?"

"You can come back here, set up shop as a guide."

"Hm," I say.

"Buy your own sparkly fishing boat, even."

"That's the dream, Fost. That's the dream."

I'm not saying Anders is a better fisherman than me, but the potential is there. I wonder if this is how Fost felt, taking me out all those years ago. Not that I was better, because he was a great fisherman, but all that untapped potential, and hell, how I loved to practice. That's something that hasn't faded in all the years away from this place, and though I would go fishing in Michigan, it wasn't the same. This is my water. Thirty-plus summers spent studying these depths, marking the bogs as they emerged and submerged year after year. That's not something I could replicate anywhere else in the world. A terrible day on my water was still a thousand percent better than the best day in one of those overcrowded, hotshot lakes.

Anders feels that. He's got the itch so bad it's more like a full-body rash. Night after night, I see him standing on the shore, casting a line, next to his hand-me-down tackle box, self-dug bait, and a rod and pole set up that he'll grow into. I'd watch him reel in something— anything —smile at it or maybe himself—before tossing the lucky fish gently back in the shallows with a murmured, "See you next time."

That right there is the difference between a real fisherman and a fair-weather opportunist. The casual catch and release. All Anders wants is to perfect his art, and he's comfortable letting them go and grow until they're big enough to get his name on a wall.

I spotted Anders from the first and picked him as the one I wanted: the perfect fishing partner. Joe laughed when I asked him but agreed easily enough. "I can't imagine there's anything left for him to catch off the dock. He's literally caught everything in the lake three times over."

The weather is starting to turn. Not all the way, but enough that I know we have maybe weeks left. You can fish as long as there isn't ice (and then you can ice fish) but musky go deep, chasing warmth, and the lake might be my happy place, but I don't need to freeze my ass off chasing the littles.

No, thank you. I'll take a cozy fireplace and a romance novel.

But for now, we fish.

"Ease up on your tension, kid. They can sense when you're desperate."

"I'm not desperate," he scoffs, licking his lips and rolling them together with concentration. This is our third time out and I'm determined to land him his first musky. Something so big, the net won't even hold it. So big we both need to pull it into the boat, and even then, we're sore the next morning from the effort.

But I'm starting to lose hope that tonight is it. The sun's already dipping low in the sky. Even if he did hook one, we'd have a struggle getting an eye on it.

"Hey, let's switch things up. Pull in. I'm gonna move us over by Harper's Bridge for some smallies."

"Aw, I don't want bass."

"Sure you do. Better than going in. Plus, even if you got a musky on the line out here, we could lose it to the dark. You don't want to lose your first musky. You'll spend the rest of your life telling people it was this big "—I hold my hands out expansively—"and everyone will just roll their eyes like, Sure, buddy ."

He looks so disappointed, it makes my heart squeeze. "Look," I say, using my best Ranger Maren voice that always worked on my educational tours when I needed to convince hikers to climb the biggest bitch of a hill on the trail. "I only have a morning group tomorrow. Let's check with your dad, and if he's okay with it, I can meet you right off the bus and we'll get out by four. That will give us plenty of daylight."

He brightens at the prospect of another day. "Okay."

"So smallies, then?"

"Yeah." He grins, already reeling in his line.

"Maren?"

"Yeah?"

Anders doesn't look at me, his eyes on the transparent line dancing in the still water. But I sense his attention is fixed on me more than usual. There's an intensity about him that he's not quite old enough or adept enough to bury under pretense. Because of this, I reel my line in, unhurried.

"Dad said he knew you since you were my age?"

"Longer, even, though I'm sure he doesn't remember that far back. It was a really, really long time ago," I exaggerate with a wry grin.

"Does that mean you knew my mom, too?"

I blink. Of all the questions he could ask me, this wasn't anywhere on my radar. I decide to be honest.

"A little. She would come to the resort to hang out with your dad quite a bit when they were teenagers, dating, and you know Uncle Liam is my big brother. He spent time with them, too. I was around, but much younger. Liam didn't like me tagging along, and I was like you—I'd rather go fishing than hang out with big kids doing boring big-kid stuff. Why? What do you want to know?"

"What was she like?"

I tilt my head to the side, remembering back and trying to picture Kiley in my mind as she was then. "She was pretty and sweet and very outgoing. And she was very in love with your dad."

"Did my dad seem to be in love with her?"

"Very. They were kind of gross, honestly. Super in love."

"Until they had kids."

I press my lips together, alarm bells ringing in my brain. How to handle this? "I'm not sure that's exactly it, Anders. Firstly, because the way I hear it, kids make your love multiply, not divide. You're learning about multiplication and division, right?" At his nod, I go on. "Okay, so then you know multiplication means things grow.

"I don't even have kids of my own, but just knowing you and hanging out with you and your sister, or my nieces and nephews, makes my heart swell so full it feels like it could explode. It used to be so tiny. I'm telling you," I say, and hold two fingers really close together to show him. He smiles. "Like minuscule. But then I met you and…" I make a fake explosion sound, waving spirit fingers. "So that wasn't it."

Anders's smile fades. "But then what happened?"

I lift my shoulder, letting my arms fall to my sides. "I don't know for sure. You'll have to talk to your dad. I think sometimes, we can love the wrong person. Maybe they are the right person at first, and then time passes, and they become wrong. Your mom and dad were in love, and they were right for each other because they were supposed to make you and Lucy. And they did."

"And that was it?"

I shake my head. "I guess so, bud. Though I wouldn't call that it . That's a lot. That's everything, even. You and Lucy are amazing."

"Sometimes I get mad at Lucy," he admits. "But I still love her."

"That's pretty normal. I get mad at my brothers, too. But I still love them, and they love me."

"I get mad at my mom sometimes."

"That's okay, too."

"It is?" he checks, his voice small.

I release a long breath, looking out over the water and praying I don't mess this up. I'm really, really not the one he should be talking to about this, but he clearly needs to talk. I think ruefully of all the emotions I dumped at the feet of Fost over the years and figure this is his revenge from the great big lake in the sky.

"You're allowed to have feelings, Anders. We all are. And we can't really control them, anyway. We feel what we feel," I say, internally wincing at how cliché I sound. "Does that make sense?"

"Not really."

I huff out a laugh. "Yeah. You're right. I don't know what I'm talking about. I dumped my last boyfriend by throwing up on him."

Anders snickers. "That's disgusting."

"Super gross," I agree.

"But you think it's okay I'm mad at my mom?"

"Yes. I do. You're hurt and she isn't here. That's fair. But I would call her."

"No thanks."

I don't push it, but I make a mental note to see if maybe Joe should pass on the message to Kiley to call him. After all, it's not Anders's job to be the one to reach out. But just as quickly, I shake off the thought. I'm not involved, and I don't need to be inserting myself into this family. It's one thing for Anders to pour his heart out. He's my fishing partner. It's a whole other thing to start mediating parental duties.

"Okay. That's your choice."

"I think I want to just fish for a while, Maren, okay? I'm done talking about it."

"Of course," I say, picking up my pole. "I'm here whenever. Let's catch a few more before we have to go in."

And we do—we cast and reel and cast and reel and Anders doesn't say another word about his family.

But I don't stop thinking about them. About Kiley most of all, and wondering how on earth she could walk away from them. I don't know much about anything when it comes to love and marriage and kids and family, but I already know I'm going to have a terrible time leaving my new fishing partner when I'm done here.