Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Alex

I'M HERE. THE place I hate the most in the entire damn world.

Tripp fucking Lake.

I hate this little town. I hate how small it is. I hate how everyone knows each other. I hate how my parents live just on the edge of town with more trees than people around them.

But I'm here. And there's no going back to San Francisco. Not for the next week, at least.

I take a deep breath as I stand before my parents' door, reminding myself that this is temporary. Even so, my hand curls tighter around the strap of the duffel bag I carry. It contains everything I need for the next week: clothes, toiletries, and, of course, my work laptop so I don't fall behind on cases while I'm here. Besides, it's not like there's anything else to do in this dull, forgettable town.

Okay, I can do this. When I got the call from Mom, I knew I had to come, no matter how I feel about this place. Dad's heart attack scared the shit out of all of us, and recovery has been hard on both him and Mom, even if the doctors are calling it a "lesser incident" or whatever. Lesser or not, my parents need help. It's only a week. I survived eighteen years here. I can survive a week.

I cling to all the justifications as I finally knock on the door. I don't bother to wait. If I linger, I'll lose my nerve. Yet as I open the door, I find myself wishing my sister was here. She's a student at a university only a half hour away, but she has classes today. I'm on my own.

Gathering my courage, I step inside. The house hasn't changed. I could be eighteen all over again, declaring that I'm going to school in a different state, holding back the part about how that's partially to get away from this place. The couch is in the same place it's always been. It's a bit more weathered and seems to sink more under the weight of my father sitting on the right edge of it where he's sat for the past twenty years. The TV is the same. The coffee table still looks like it came right out of the eighties. The archway leading into the kitchen shows me the same sliver of gray appliances it always has.

My mother suddenly fills that arch. Her eyes widen when she spots me, as though I didn't tell them I'd be arriving today.

"Alexander, my God, you made it," she says.

My father cranes his neck to regard me. "Son."

I suppose that counts as a greeting.

I set my bag on the floor of the entryway so I can hug my mother in greeting. She immediately starts in on me.

"You haven't been home in so long," she says. "It's been ages. Not even the holidays. How do you celebrate holidays in San Francisco? Do they do it differently?"

"Mom, it's just a city. They do it the same way you do it here."

"I'm sure they're putting Pride flags on their Christmas trees or something. You know how those places are."

I barely don't roll my eyes. Despite living an hour from Seattle, my mother has retained her terror of any place larger than Tripp Lake, which is to say: most places.

I head for the easy chair beside the couch and settle into it. It leaves me close to my father, but with a healthy separation between us. Both of us seem more comfortable with this arrangement.

"Dad," I say. "How are you feeling?"

He waves a big, thick hand. "Fine, fine. The doctors are exaggerating."

Behind him, my mother shakes her head.

"Dad, you had a heart attack. That's pretty serious. I'm sure they aren't exaggerating."

"And am I supposed to avoid another one by sitting here watching TV all day? I'm fine. They said it was a ‘lesser incident.' Besides, the lawn needs mowing. I can't let it keep growing because some doctor said I need to sit around for weeks."

I can't resist a sigh. Looks like I'll be mowing their lawn this afternoon. My father has always been a stubborn man, and it seems a heart attack has not improved his outlook whatsoever. He's also a big guy, nearly as tall as me, but wider and heavier, with a thick beard where I just maintain some dark stubble. My entire appearance has been cultivated almost in defiance of how similar we're supposed to look. I work out, keep myself in shape, keep my beard trimmed and my dark hair tidy and short. Contained. Controlled. I could probably stomp into rooms and command them with a booming voice the way he does, but I've gone the opposite direction instead. I flew here in slacks. I look like I could be coming back from a case.

I hesitate a beat too long before dragging myself up to mow the lawn. After getting up early to get a ride to the airport, then flying, then taking a train and a car from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to here, I'm exhausted. The easy chair lures me into relaxing, offering the cushioned comfort and ample leg room that didn't seem worth splurging on for the short flight here.

But that gives my mother a chance to flit around the couch, settle herself on it and start laying into me with questions.

"So, how is San Francisco? How is your job? Is it going well?"

This should be an innocuous series of questions, but I'm a lawyer, and I can already see where she's headed. I get all the skills I need for my job from her. She's always been the one interrogating me and my sister when we were teenagers getting in trouble.

"It's fine," I say.

I can't give her an inch, but I know that even the word "fine" is going to fire her up. I'm supposed to be loving my life; I'm supposed to be living the dream. Being a lawyer is what my parents have always wanted for me. I'm their golden boy, the one they can brag about to their neighbors. A fancy lawyer in a fancy city. I did everything I was supposed to do.

And somehow it isn't enough.

"Just fine?" Mom says. "Do you have any exciting cases? What's it like working for a big firm?"

I know what she wants to hear. Wow, Mom, it's so great and I love it so much. I wake up every day in my fancy San Francisco apartment and go to my fancy big firm lawyer job and I love every single second of it.

Except that's so far from the truth that even as a lawyer I can't slap on a poker face and lie about it. The truth, the thing she doesn't want to hear, is that I'm miserable. The job she's so proud of fills me with dread and shame every single day. I drag myself to that office, often late, and try not to think too hard about the dismal work I'm doing. I started out going to school for environmental science. When my parents pushed me to go to law school as well, I figured I could still do what I actually love, but the reality proved quite different. Instead of fighting for the environment, I find loopholes for corporations so they can go on destroying it. I've only been at it for a year and I already feel sullied beyond redemption.

Of course, saying any of this would only result in the sort of argument I've been having with my parents for the past decade, the kind of argument that chased me out of this damn town. My dad's the one who had a heart attack recently, but the fight would probably be worse for my heart than his. So I surrender and give my mother what she wants.

"It's great," I say, utterly unconvincing. "Really … exciting work."

Mom brightens, rewarding me with the most precious of boons — letting the matter drop. I take the victory and announce my intention to mow the lawn. Ten minutes in this house and I'm already searching for ways out.

I take some genuine solace in the dreary chore, however. I can put on a podcast and mow in peace. The mower is too loud for anyone to talk to me. And this is why I'm here, right? To help out while Dad recovers. My parents aren't monsters or anything, just pushy, so surely I can keep my head down, do some chores and get through this next week.

I'm feeling like I might actually survive by the time I put the mower back in the garage and head in, covered in flecks of grass. I may have stained my slacks this way, but I don't really mind. The fresh grass smells nice. If I've missed anything about this town, it's this: Fresh grass, trees on all sides, the smell of pine and dirt, mountains in the distance on clear days. Tripp Lake is gorgeous; I have to give it that. If I'd stayed here protecting those trees and mountains I might have even learned to love it.

I trudge back inside and excuse myself to shower. My childhood bedroom still contains the same twin bed and crappy desk. Mom hasn't even taken down my posters of video game and anime characters. Man, if my co-workers could see this they'd never let me live it down.

I hide in that bedroom for as long as I can, but eventually Mom shouts that she's made dinner. Great. This should be a fun experience. I'm used to eating something I microwaved while sitting on the couch watching streaming services. I seriously don't want to be sitting around a table with nothing to do but talk to my parents.

Especially because my mother dives right back in where she left off.

"What about your love life, Alex? Are you seeing anyone?"

I cringe. Possibly visibly. College was fun and all, but law school was brutal. And I went right from that to my current job, which is almost as grueling. Even if it wasn't, I wouldn't describe myself as a ray of sunshine while I'm in the midst of doing work that clings to my skin like slime every day. I'm not about to tell my mother that all I've done in the past year is hook up with one co-worker, regret it, then hook up with another and regret that too.

"Not much time for it," I say.

She scowls. Right. Yeah. Because at twenty-five I only have a fancy job as a lawyer in a big firm, but I don't also have the girlfriend-potentially-wife my parents would love for me to have. There's always some way in which I'm letting them down.

"Anyway," I say, "what about you guys? Anything going on around here?"

I don't actually care, but anything that takes the spotlight off me.

"Actually," Mom says, "a lot has been going on, hasn't it, Billy?"

"Town's changing," my father grumbles.

"It really is," Mom says. "Oh, you have to come downtown with us while you're here. You won't even recognize it. It's all new. You know Gilly Stevens? She's been mayor here forever now. She completely redid Main Street. It's beautiful. And there's that cat café that opened not too long ago. Your sister loves it. You need to see it some day. Maybe we'll go tomorrow."

I struggle not to groan. I was going to hide in my room and work. The last thing I need is a tour of downtown, especially whatever this cat café thing is. Sounds unsanitary at best.

It's only a week, I remind myself. One week. I can tour downtown and mow the lawn for one week. I can give my mother the answers she wants for one week. I can avoid telling my parents the truth for one stupid week. Then I can escape Tripp Lake, just like I did when I was eighteen.