Chapter 10 - The Lake on Pend Oreille
Fourteen months after Ren’s first birthday—on a warm, brilliant Saturday in late June—the sun was setting over the deep blue waters of Lake Pend Oreille.
The cedar dock that my father had built with his brothers in the summer of 1978 had been freshly scrubbed and sealed. The old cabin, with its green metal roof and screened-in porch, smelled of fresh pine oil, woodsmoke, and the sweet, buttery aroma of peach cobbler baking in the oven.
The property was no longer in dispute. The court had cleared the title, returning it wholly to my mother’s name, who had promptly placed it into an irrevocable family trust for Ren’s future education.
Down on the edge of the dock, Elias was sitting with his legs dangling over the clear water. He was wearing his faded swim trunks and an old gray t-shirt, his bare shoulders brown from a summer spent outdoors. Between his knees sat Ren.
She was two years old now.
Her legs were long and sturdy, her skin covered in tiny, sun-kissed freckles, and her bright, copper hair was tied into two messy pigtails that bounced every time she laughed. She was holding a tiny bamboo fishing pole, her small hands wrapped tightly around the cork grip, watching a red-and-white plastic bobber float gently on the ripples.
“Watch it, bug,” Elias murmured, his voice rich with laughter as he leaned his cheek against her red hair. “The perch are nibbling. When it goes under, you give it a little tug. Not too hard.”
“Tug it, Daddy?” Ren asked, looking up at him with her wide, dark eyes—eyes that were the exact, undeniable replica of his own.
“Just a little tug, baby,” Elias smiled, kissing the crown of her copper curls. “Daddy’s got you.”
Up on the screened-in porch, my mother sat in Arthur’s old wicker rocker, snapping fresh string beans into a yellow ceramic bowl. She was wearing her linen gardening shirt, her face relaxed and peaceful, watching Elias and Ren through the screen with a gentle, contented smile that hadn't left her face all weekend.
I walked down the wooden steps from the cabin, carrying two cold bottles of cider in my hands. The grass was cool against my bare feet, damp with the evening dew rising from the shoreline.
I walked onto the cedar planks, the old wood warm beneath my heels, and sat down beside Elias, handing him a bottle.
He took it with a smile, clinking the glass against mine. “She almost had a sunfish five minutes ago. Lost her worm, though.”
“Did she?” I asked, leaning my head against his shoulder.
“She’s stubborn, Nina,” Elias chuckled softly, watching our daughter intently track the plastic bobber. “Gets it from her mother’s side.”
“And her father’s side,” I added, nudging his ribs with my elbow.
Behind us, down the gravel driveway through the pine trees, a dust cloud rose as a car approached.
For a single, fleeting second, the old reflex—the knot of tension that had lived behind my ribs for two years—tried to tighten. But then the car rounded the bend. It was Beckett’s blue station wagon. The windows were down, and his two boys were already waving their orange life jackets out the back windows, shouting Ren’s name across the cove.
Beside Beckett in the front passenger seat sat Loretta, wearing her straw sunhat, holding a cardboard flat of fresh strawberries from the valley market.
The gate was no longer guarded. The rumors had been burned to ash, carried away by the river and the court records, leaving only the bedrock behind.
Ren let out a squeal of pure, unadulterated joy as her bobber suddenly dipped beneath the surface of the lake.
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“Daddy! Daddy, look! The fish! The fish is pulling!”
Elias laughed—a great, booming sound that echoed off the granite cliffs across the bay—and wrapped his big, capable hands over hers on the small bamboo rod. Together, father and daughter lifted the line from the water, their faces glowing in the amber light of the setting sun, two dark eyes and one halo of fire, completely and undeniably one.