Summer at Forsaken Lake (10 page)

“Of course he does,” said Hetty. “He’s just too dumb to know it yet. Remember—Mom used to say that about Dad.”

Nicholas slid a few feet closer, smiling to himself at how clueless they were. Then he pounced on them, shouting “ARRGGHH!” and throwing a filthy blanket over their heads.

They screamed, trying to escape the trap, but Nicholas managed to keep them in custody long enough to tell them, “You know what else Mom used to say?
Mind your own business!
”

“Nicholas! Stop it!” Hetty cried as she poked her head out from under the blanket.

“You are going to be in
so
much trouble,” Hayley added, jumping to her feet with hands firmly planted on her hips.

“I’m going to tell Mummy,” said Hetty, returning to her British accent.

Nicholas laughed.
“Mummy?”
He added, in his own bad accent, “Well, when you ring Mummy, just make
bloody
sure you tell her about how you were spying on me.”

“We weren’t spying,” said Hetty. “We were just listening.”

“Oh, that’s different,” Nicholas said.

“C’mon, Hayley. Let’s get out of here and leave them … 
alone
.” The twins stormed out of the barn.

“What was
that
all about?” Charlie asked when Nicholas returned.

“Oh, nothing. They were just snooping, like usual. Mom calls them the Snoop Sisters.”

“Are you going to get in trouble?”

“No. They won’t tell her, because they know they’re not supposed to be spying.”

“You hungry at all?”

The change of subject caught Nicholas off guard. “What? Uh, yeah, I guess. Let’s just try to finish this section, and then we’ll go in.”

They went back to their sanding, and were soon so caught up in what they were doing that they didn’t notice when Nick came in twenty minutes later. The twins, a few feet behind, stopped at the threshold, refusing to step inside the barn.

Nick ran his hand over the hull, took a deep breath, and smiled.

“Ah, nothing like the smell of freshly sanded wood.
Almost
makes me want to build another boat.”

“I’m just happy she’s only twelve feet long,” said Nicholas. “I can’t imagine doing this to
Goblin
.”

“And with only one arm,” Uncle Nick reminded him. “You can switch hands when you get tired. You two have done a great job. Let’s flip her over, and then you can tackle the deck and the inside.”

They rolled the boat up on one edge and then all the way over so she was sitting deck-side up. Charlie and Nicholas both sighed when they saw the expanse of un-sanded wood that lay before them.

“Maybe you two are ready for a break,” said Uncle Nick. “She’ll still be here tomorrow. Nice breeze blowin’ out there. Good day for a sail.” He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Nicholas and Charlie looked at each other. They were both tired and a little sore from all the sanding, and a relaxing sail around the lake with a few stops for swimming thrown in would certainly be more fun than an afternoon of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Charlie spoke first. “I know it’s a beautiful day, but we still have a lot of work …”

Nicholas nodded. “Even if we finished sanding today, we need to buy paint and varnish and brushes, and then you have to show us how to do all that, and we have to put on
how
many coats?”

“Four or five, at least,” admitted Uncle Nick. “If everything goes according to schedule, you could be sailing her in a couple of weeks. Today’s probably the worst day.
Lots of sitting around and waiting for paint to dry from here on.”

“Two weeks?” Nicholas said, sounding surprised and a little disappointed.

Uncle Nick put his hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. “No shortcuts, I’m afraid. Better to be patient and do it right the first time. So go ahead, you can stay and work. There’s fixin’s for sandwiches and iced tea in the fridge when you’re ready for lunch. The twins and I are going for a sail.”

“Yay!” cried Hayley and Hetty, who turned and ran toward the lake, with Pistol trotting along beside them.

* * *

As Nicholas and Charlie sanded (and sanded, and sanded) on opposite sides of the Heron’s deck, they returned to the topic of the letter.

“What should we do about it?” she asked.

“Do? What do you mean? What
can
we do?”

“Maybe I should tell my mom.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. At all,” Nicholas said.

“Why not? Don’t you think she deserves to know the truth—that your dad never found her letter?”

“We don’t
know
that. And what good will it do now? It’ll probably just make your mom mad at us for reading it. It’s kind of personal, you know. And it’s ancient history. It’s not like they’re going to get back together or something like people do in the movies.”

“Maybe you’re right, but old people—like our parents—are always talking about ‘closure.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“I think it just means that they finally know the truth, and then they can stop worrying about whatever it was that happened.”

“You seriously think your mom has been worrying about why my dad didn’t write to her for thirty-some years?”

“That’s just it! I don’t know! Maybe she has. Maybe the only reason she married my dad is because she got tired of waiting for
your
dad.”

Nicholas was too exasperated to respond, which made Charlie smile.

“You’re starting to see it my way, aren’t you?” she asked. “What about your dad? Do you think we should tell him, too?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer. You know, I think I know what this is about. Your parents have only been divorced for a year, right? You’ve seen too many movies where these adorable, clever kids do something to get the parents back together. Look, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but trust me, Nicholas: it’s not gonna happen. Life isn’t like the movies. When my parents got divorced, I used to spend hours planning crazy schemes to get them together.
I’d get my hopes up and then I’d be disappointed when nothing happened.”

“That’s
not
what I think is going to happen,” Nicholas said. “I’m not some little kid, like Hayley or Hetty, you know. You don’t know anything about it, so just … drop it, okay? Jeez, like you’re an expert on my life or something.”

He put his head down and concentrated extra hard on the section of deck he was sanding so he wouldn’t have to look at Charlie, who was trying to make eye contact with him. What really annoyed him about the whole thing was that she was right, of course. He
did
still hope that his parents would get back together, even though he knew, deep down, that it would never happen.

“Nicholas.”

He pretended not to hear.

Why do you have to be such an annoying girl sometimes?

“I’m sorry, okay? I just don’t want you to have to go through what I did.”

Nicholas grunted, but still didn’t look up.

“And … for
now
, I agree that we won’t say anything to your dad. Unless my mom wants to. That would be different, right? Nicholas? C’mon! Are you ever going to talk to me again?”

He shrugged, still annoyed by her know-it-all ways, and still refusing to look at her. But Nicholas Mettleson had met his match in stubbornness. Charlie moved over to his side of the boat and started to sand the same spot he
was working on. When he moved over a few inches, she followed him, smiling to herself all the while. After a few more attempts, he was frustrated enough to slam his hand down on the boat and look up at her.

To his credit, he
tried
to maintain his composure and stay mad at her, but it was no use. She looked back at him with the “strikeout smile” smeared across her face, and he couldn’t help himself—his own mouth betrayed him and broke into a smile. He shook his head in frustration.

Charlie put her arm around his shoulders as they went inside for lunch. “You’re a nice kid, Nicholas. Just don’t mess with me.”

* * *

Charlie invited Nicholas to dinner at her house that evening, and after they filled up on meat loaf, baked potatoes, and the first sweet corn of the season, Charlie led her mom into the living room and sat down next to her on the couch.

“What’s
this
all about, Charlie?” Franny asked, forcing a smile. “Oh no, you’re going to ask for a raise in your allowance, aren’t you?”

“No-ooo. Nothing like that. We … well, Nicholas, actually … found something that belongs to you. In the tower room over at Nick’s.”

“Oh?” Her face brightened instantly. “My ID bracelet? I got it for my twelfth birthday, and I lost it a couple of
years later, the summer that … the last summer your dad spent here.”

Charlie shook her head. “Nope, not a bracelet. It’s a letter. That you wrote.”

“That
I
wrote? Why would there be a letter that … Oh my. The letter I wrote to Will.”

Nicholas then produced the letter from the right front pocket of his shorts.

“I’m sorry I read it,” he said, handing it to her. “I know I shouldn’t have. But when I found it, I didn’t know you; I didn’t know anything
about
you. It was just an old letter.”

Franny held the letter in the open palm of her hand and ran her index finger over the name “Will” that she had so neatly printed twenty-five years earlier. The corners of her mouth softened into a semblance of a smile, and her eyes glistened as memories came flooding back to her.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” Charlie asked.

Nicholas stirred uncomfortably in his chair. Clearly, Charlie and her mom had a very different relationship from the one he had with his parents. He couldn’t imagine confronting either of them on something so personal. It just wasn’t done in the Mettleson family. Private meant private, which is one reason Nicholas felt guilty for having read somebody else’s letter.

“I’m getting there,” said Franny. “Still mustering up my courage. I’m a little afraid of what I might have said. I was a lot like you, Charlie, when I was your age
—very
emotional. Not at all like the rock I am today,” she added with a laugh.

“Uh-huh. A rock. That’s just what I was thinking,” said Charlie. “C’mon, read it!”

Franny unfolded the letter as if she were handling a priceless document from a museum, and Nicholas noticed that her hands were shaking as she finally held it before her and began to read.

Just as he and Charlie had both done, when she got to the bottom, she went right back and read it a second time. Her eyes were shiny with tears, and Nicholas turned away, embarrassed to be caught in the middle of this very private moment.

“I should probably get going,” he said cheerfully. “Thanks for dinner, Mrs. Brennan. That corn was amazing. I have to admit, Charlie’s right about that—the corn in Ohio is better than in New York. See you tomorrow, Charlie.” He stood up to go.

“No, don’t go,” said Franny, wiping a tear away and reaching for a box of tissues. “Stay, Nicholas. I’m sorry. I guess there’s still a little of the old emotional me in here.”

“So here’s what we think, Mom: Will never got the letter.” Charlie explained her theory about Will’s parents arriving early and whisking him back to the city before he had a chance to check the secret hiding place one last time. “It makes perfect sense,” she continued. “Why else would he leave it behind? And the movie.”

“What you say is certainly possible,” Franny said, then
gave a sad sigh. “His parents
did
come earlier than expected that day. In fact, I barely got out of Nick’s house in time. But I think there’s another explanation. Maybe he just wanted to forget about me. And the movie. That’s what got him into all the—”

“All the
what
, Mom? What
happened
?” Charlie pleaded.

Franny sighed deeply and then smiled at Charlie and Nicholas. “Let’s invite Nick and your sisters over for some ice cream and then I’m going to tell you two a little story.”

W
hen the ice cream bowls had been emptied and the spoons licked clean, the twins went into Franny’s room to enjoy a special treat. “You have a
television
?” Hetty asked as Franny led them away. “That is just
brilliant
. I do so miss the telly.”

Nicholas shook his head. “Oh brother. Uncle Nick, please, no more books about England for those two. Hetty is driving me crazy with that stupid accent.”

When Franny came back, they took seats out on the porch, where they watched the sunset and listened to the familiar, relaxing sound of outboard motors putt-putting up the lake. Although it felt a bit like snooping to him, Nick read the letter that had remained undiscovered for so
long in his house, sighing sadly as he folded it and handed it back to Franny.

“I wanted Nick to be here, too,” started Franny, “because he’ll remember some things I’ve forgotten, and on top of that, he probably knew more about it than I did. It’s funny—it was a long time ago, but as I read this letter, my stomach did flip-flops when I got to the part about Will leaving. For a second, I felt like I was fourteen again.”