He scrubs a hand down his face. “Why did he need the car seat?”
I finally stop what I’m doing so I can concentrate on him. “For the baby. Duh.”
His eyebrows fly up toward his hairline. “Did you seriously just duh me?”
“I seriously did.” I glare at him for a second, then I can’t fight back my smile. “Eli and Sam needed to go get kitten supplies, and they needed a car seat so they could take Miles, so they just took your car. You don’t mind, do you?”
He huffs out a breath. “Would it matter if I did?”
“Everything okay, Aaron?”
He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “No, everything is not okay.” He starts to tick items off on his fingers. “I can’t find my kids. There are supposed to be three of them.” He touches his second finger. “My van is gone.” He touches another finger. “I slept late.” He touches a fourth finger. “Jake drew titties on my hand in permanent marker while I was sleeping last night.”
I bite back a snort, only half-successfully. “At least it wasn’t a dick on your forehead this time.”
He rocks his head to the side. “True,” he finally admits. “Today just feels…weird. I don’t know why.”
I jerk a thumb toward my shack. “Did you clean out my little building?”
“When would I have done that?”
“Hmm. I wonder who did it.”
“Eli did it this morning,” a voice calls out from the yard next door.
I spin and find Jake standing there. He’s holding the hand of one of his kids and the other kid he’s wearing like Eli was.
“Eli was up with the baby, so he just came outside and started working. He found the baby carrier in your stuff,” Jake explains to Aaron.
“I slept through all this,” Aaron says in disbelief.
“You needed some rest,” Jake says.
“Thanks for the titties, by the way.” Aaron shoots Jake a look.
Jake chuckles. “Wasn’t me. That was all Pop.”
Aaron’s eyes nearly bug out of their sockets, but finally he laughs. “I’ll have to thank him.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Jake warns. “It’s best if you ignore his bad behavior.” He points toward the side of the house. “Eli leaned your bikes up against the side of the house after he gave them a good washing.”
“Bikes?” I walk in that direction. My old red bike with the wicker basket on the front is leaning against the side of the house. And my dad’s old ten-speed is right next to it. And my mom’s three-speed, with the wide seat because she didn’t like her shorts getting shoved up her butt crack by a narrow seat, leans right behind them. A box sits on the ground that’s filled with buckets, pails, deflated floats, and other lake toys. There are discarded items from years past in the box next to it. It holds toys we outgrew and things we didn’t want anymore.
“Eli has been busy,” Aaron says, hands on hips.
“Very,” I reply, still a little shocked at how things are going today.
The crunch of gravel signals Mr. Jacobson’s arrival. He comes around the corner on his red cart, driving across the grass, and stops in front of Jake. “Katie sent me to get you.”
Jake frowns. “Is she all right?”
“Fine. She said you’re supposed to be going to an appointment in a few minutes.”
“Oh, shit,” Jake says, looking at his watch. “Baby doctor.”
Jake passes the oldest of his little ones to Mr. Jacobson, who balances him on his knee, and Jake climbs into the cart next to him. They leave without another word.
I scratch my head. “Do you feel like you’re in some sort of alternate universe?” I ask.
“I’m beginning to,” Aaron says slowly, nodding in agreement. “I still don’t know exactly where my kids are.” He sits down on the grass and starts to riffle through the box of lake toys. He holds up a pair of pink sunglasses. “I remember these. You used to wear them all the time.” He perches them on his nose. Then he stares at me.
“Wonder how they ended up out in the shack,” I say, and I sit down with Aaron on the grass and start to look through the things. I pull a small matchbox car out of the box. “I think this was yours.” I roll it toward him in the grass and it stops a foot away from him. He leans over with a groan and picks it up.
“I won this at the carnival.” He smiles. “Do you remember the carnival?”
“The cheesy event that Mr. Jacobson put together every year?”
He chuckles. “My mom and dad always did the fishing game, the one where you tossed a fake hook over a sheet and reeled in a prize.”
“Mine did the dart game where you had to pop a balloon.”
“I loved those carnivals.” His eyes narrow with a memory. “Didn’t Eli kiss you for the first time at the carnival?”
“No.” I smile at my own memory. “That was the night he held my hand.” That was back when things were simple, yet they seemed so complex at the same time.
“Tell me about that day. What do you remember?”
“I remember everything,” I say.
15
Bess
The night air hung heavy around me, almost stifling in its intensity. It was the kind of air you had to chew before you could walk through it, my dad always said. I slapped at a mosquito that landed on my arm and looked around. The lakeside carnival used to be one of my favorite things of summer. But this year, for the first time ever, I was running an event instead of being the person who played the games and won the prizes. My mom had offered me the chance to do it, but I’d had no idea how busy it would be.
My game was the floating ducks game. We had set up a small wading pool, filled it full of water, and floated little yellow rubber ducks in it. For one ticket, the little kids could lift up three of the ducks, to see if they could win a prize. If they found a red sticker on the bottom of the duck, they won a prize. If not, they got a piece of candy. All night long I’d given out candy, and I’d given out enough whistles, balloons, and tiny red balls that I was tired of looking at them.
Finally, when it was almost dark, the lines of little people hoping to win prizes started to dwindle. I sat down on the ground and rested my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands, and stared toward the lake. I’d seen Jake, Aaron, and Eli walk toward the water almost an hour before. They’d been carrying their fishing poles and some buckets with them, and they hadn’t even given me a second glance as I worked at the carnival. Silently, I’d willed Eli to look in my direction. He didn’t, though. He just laughed when Jake burped really loudly and then he kept going with the boys toward the lake.
I’d wanted to follow them. All week long, Eli and I had been spending time together. It had started out as just three groups of friends. Lynda and Aaron were, of course, together. And Jake and Katie had just started to get to know one another. Katie was new to the lake, and she’d arrived with her dad and her uncle two weeks before. Jake and Katie had been inseparable ever since the night he accidentally bumped her and knocked her off the dock into the freezing cold water.