Page 29 of The Ripple Effect

“It was great to be on the water for the first time.” Trevor shares a look with Petra like they have a secret clasped between their palms. They weren’t naturals, but they stuck it out like it was their job, never getting snappish.

“Me and Sloane made a good team,” Dereck chimes in brightly, which surprises me. He seemed miserable all afternoon, constantly cold even after McHuge loaned him his wind shell. “I love working with her. I’d like to do it a lot more.”

They beam at each other and we all suffer cardiac arrest. Dereck has underwear-model smolder and eyelashes thickerthan some people’s hair. Sloane has a Matt Damon quality of being very interesting to look at until she smiles, at which point everyone plucks their heart directly out of their chest and hands it over. If their movie has anything like this kind of chemistry, their careers are going to go stratospheric.

Sloane’s “secret” came out this afternoon, when Lori cocked her head at Sloane’s windblown Deanna-like hair and shouted “Cow PieDeanna!”

This led to fifteen minutes of excited clamor in the middle of practicing draw and pry strokes and an argument between Brent and Willow. She said he used to love that show; he insisted he’d been in college when it aired and would never have watched it.Cow Pie Highwas never as big asDegrassi, but everyone except Brent has been finding reasons to stand next to Sloane, hang their gear beside hers, and generally fangirl all over. There was an intense game of silent musical chairs before Circle, everyone lingering to see where she’d sit, then scrambling for nearby logs when she made a move.

“Good insight, everyone,” McHuge says, nodding. “Learning a new skill can be frustrating. It’s important to maintain focus on enjoying the activity and each other. Brent, Willow, what went well for you?”

“Wedidn’t tip,” Brent says, right to the still-dripping McHuge.

It takes a great deal of effort—and the knowledge that McHuge is already mad at me—to keep quiet. How Brent gets any scoops when he walks around pissing off every single source like this, I’ll never know.

“Moving on,” McHuge says. Am I the only one who felt the micro-bite in his voice? Looking around at the guests’ rapt faces, I think so. “What felt difficult or challenging to you personally? No fair critiquing your partner.”

An uncomfortable silence grips the circle. Everyone mademistakes, but Brent and Willow blew right through Get It Together and landed firmly in Get Out of Here.

We’d all wished we couldn’t hear his voice cracking across the water. “Left, Willow, paddle left! Dammit, right, right,right!” They were the only couple who got worse as the afternoon went on—bad enough that McHuge and I paddled over to sort them out after a pair of bird-watchers turned their binoculars our way.

The closer we got, the more dysfunctional they became. Willow stabbed her paddle into the water with panicky inefficiency; Brent yelled about the boat’s defective steering. As we came alongside, Brent switched his paddle to Willow’s side, leaned out, and dug hard. The overloaded right side lurched downward like Brent had pressed an eject button.

I didn’t even think, just grabbed for their left gunwale and shoved it down as hard as I could, desperate to put the bottom of their canoe back in the water and save them from a first-day swim.

“Stellar! What the—” McHuge yelped as our boat, bound by the laws of physics, bucked us out in the opposite direction.

McHuge and I surfaced at opposite ends of our canoe, shocked into breathlessness by the freezing river. Willow looked like she wanted to cry. Brent shrugged. “I told her to paddle on the left, but…”

He hadn’t even used Willow’s name while he threw her under the bus. The injustice burned worse than the water in my nose. Breathless with cold, I gasped, “Wife.That’s your wife. You’re talking about. My guy.”

Goodbye, five stars.

McHuge papered over my mistake by demonstrating two types of water rescue, but I could feel everyone’s pity and blame.

In the here and now, the quiet rolls on. Everyone’s very interested in the ground.

McHuge catches my eye meaningfully in the signal we agreed he would use only in an emergency:Help me out.Debriefing isn’t in my job description, but I’m not eye-arguing this with him on the day I sent him swimming.

“I tipped my canoe. Our canoe,” I correct myself. “I don’t feel great about it. It’s rough to be the only one who tips when you’re supposed to be the instructor.”

Humility isn’t my style. I had to be self-assured in department meetings at Grey Tusk General if I didn’t want my points swept aside by men questioning my math or complaining that I was “emotional.” Exposing myself to criticism is physically painful, but it’s my fault McHuge’s curls will be wet all night, so it’s only fair.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” Lori reaches out to squeeze my arm. “Everyone tips sometimes. Well, Mitch and I don’t,” she says, grinning at the round of chuckles.

“Lori and I don’t tip because we’re past that point in our lives,” Mitch says. “Our bodies aren’t as forgiving as they used to be. It’s why we looked for a trip where there’s a doctor. But if we didn’t tip back in the day, we knew we weren’t pushing ourselves enough.”

The dam is broken: one by one, everyone shares something they screwed up. McHuge lets the guests do most of the talking, but the few words he says somehow prompt them to make his points for him. He makes everyone feel brilliant, his green eyes twinkling gold in the dappled late-afternoon light.

By the end, I’m hypnotized into believing a tandem canoe is an exact metaphor for a relationship. Then my eyes meet his across the clearing, and I remember how we clambered intoour half-swamped canoe and didn’t talk the whole way back to camp.

The guests scatter after McHuge’s closing meditation. The hammocks are calling, and Jasvinder has built a fire in the woodburning sauna.

“McHuge. I’m—”

“Later, Stellar. Okay? I’m not mad. I’d just rather wait until we have time. And privacy.” He scoops five mugs in each hand and heads for the cookhouse.

High in my chest, I get a pulse of something both good and bad. When he says “privacy,” he means the tent.

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