Page 35 of Her Property

After their last interaction, he was worried he’d scared her. His life story was kind of intense. But as much as he wanted her—and he’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted her, not just physically butbeingwith her too—if his story scared her, it was one thing he couldn’t do anything about.

But the weather wasn’t holding, just like his mood. He’d driven himself into a funk yesterday after Catherine had run off. He was furious with himself that he’d over-shared all the stuff about his family and freaked her out. Then, after having brought up all the old memories of his family, he was furious with Alfred yet again for adding to their pain. This morning when he’d woken up, he opened his window to see the sun had risen into a bank of dark clouds hovering near the early morning horizon. He’d skipped breakfast, going straight out to the cabins to start working. He wanted both to continue distracting himself from Cat and his feelings, but also wanted to get as much done as possible before the weather turned. By the time he started working, the clouds had coalesced overhead, and the wind had picked up significantly. Trees creaked and moaned as it blew through the forest around him. His hair lifted off his neck, sending a shiver down his back even as he was sweating from the exertion.

As Jake hoisted his ladder over his shoulder and began the trek back to the work shed to switch to painting, he was nearly knocked over by a new gust of frigid wind blowing in from over the water. He ducked his head down as it sent leaves from the surrounding forest swirling in little spirals around him. Fall was back in full force. So much for icy skinny dipping.

He hadn’t exactly told the whole truth when he’d told Catherine he swam in Ruby Lake all year round. While it was true, in a way, in that he was almost religious about swimming every day he was here when he’d visited from May to September, October usually came in crisp, and wasn’t exactly pleasant for regular dips. Swimming in November was worse, except for this year when the last week had surprised everyone into thinking there was some kind of regression to September happening.

If it weren’t iced over, hewouldswim on New Year’s like he’d done when he used to lead tours through the northwest coast of Canada. The polar bear swims in Vancouver, which involved the whole city getting geared up in bikinis and trunks on New Year’s day and heading in a mad rush into an ocean that was frosty even in the dead of summer were a favorite tradition he liked to make his clients participate in.

But Ruby Lake was usually one of the first of the official Jewel Lakes to freeze over, given its small size. And by the look of the storm coming in and sudden drop in temperature, he wouldn’t be surprised if the first freeze-over of the year were to happen on the heels of this weather.

The familiar musty smell of the shed filled his nostrils as Jake stepped inside, and he was struck with an unexpected wave of nostalgia. He and James weren’t supposed to play in it when they were kids—too many dangers inside, all of which were still here today. Precarious racks of lake-beaten canoes, rows of paddles, and stacks of archery equipment. But of course they played like two boys would when told they weren’t supposed to do something. They’d try on the life preservers and battle each other with oars. More than once they’d made off in the woods with bows and arrows, pretending they were on some kind of tracking mission.

Jake’s heart clenched. The space also reminded him of his grandfather. He had smelled like this place even after the camp closed when Jake and James moved in with them. That part was a good memory. But it was tinged with the bad, too. After Jake left Ruby Lake, James had dropped out of school. Gramps was heartbroken—the same thing had happened with their mother. Jake had come home between his travels to try to talk some sense into his brother, and to try to convince Gramps James would be okay. But Jake had been worried even then. James had started getting into trouble in his teens, but once he left Ruby Lake, there was no one to watch out for him. Not Jake, and not Gramps and Gran anymore either.

The cabin was the last place he’d seen James. Both brothers had come home when Gramps had his stroke. James was strung up on something—Jake had stopped asking what it was years before, and when Gran had begged him not to go back to the city, James had snapped at her. He’d never done that before, and Jake lost his shit on him. Gramps was in the bed on the ground floor guest room convalescing, and he’d tried to shout when he’d heard the ruckus. Tried to get out of bed to find out why Gran had shrieked. He’d fallen and nearly broke his hip when he found his legs didn’t work.

“You need to go!” Jake had shouted at his brother after he’d helped get Gramps back in bed. “Things always go to shit when you’re around.”

James had tried to apologize to Gran, but she was too worked up to hear. James just stood there as if realizing how badly he’d screwed up. Not just that time but altogether. He was twenty-eight by then, Jake thirty. Jake had interrupted one of the biggest trips of the year to come home, leaving his clients hanging. He needed to get his grandparents settled so he could get back to work. He didn’t have time to deal with James’s shit again. He’d been short with him; all out of patience. He grabbed him by the elbow and thrown him into his truck. At the bus station in Barkley Falls he reached into his wallet, pulling out all the cash he’d had inside. “Go to the city, go someplace new, I don’t care. But don’t come back here and bother them again.”

“I just wanted to make sure Gramps was okay,” James had said. He was wringing his hands in the passenger seat. He was so skinny then; his cheeks hollow.

“He’ll be okay,” Jake had said, holding his fingers to his temples. He’d hesitated, worried suddenly that this was a bad decision. Maybe he should have set James up upstairs, stayed with him while he came down. Maybe this could be the beginning of a fresh start. But Jake’s phone buzzed. The office needed him. All the stress came back.

“You need to go,” Jake had said, his voice hard.

After he got out, Jake’s baby brother had leaned back down so his face was in the window. “Maybe I’ll see you later,” James had said.

“Sure,” Jake said, itching to leave.

James had shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to go into the little station.

Two months later, James was found dead.

Maybe I’ll see you later.

He’d interrupted yet another client trip to come home for James’ funeral. He helped carry his brother’s casket down the stone steps of the funeral home and stood at the foot of his grave as they shoveled dirt over him. His mother was there, wailing. As if she’d been around this whole time.

Jake had left the funeral without saying goodbye to anyone. He stayed at Aubrey’s all afternoon, hiding from his mother while Aubrey came back wordlessly with coffee, and pie, and then whiskey, snuck from her personal stash. His mother had always been closer to James than to him, maybe because James never hid in his room when she came back to visit. James had been younger than Jake when she left and he wasn’t angry with her the way Jake was. James just wanted her to stay; he always told Jake she would come back for him. She never did, until now. Too little too late.

* * *

After hoistingthe ladder back up on the wall, Jake picked up the paint and made his way back to Cabin Three. Maybe he’d be able to get at least one cabin done before the rain hit.

But as he popped open the can of paint his anger began to flare.

He couldn’t keep this up.

Jake dipped his roller into his paint tray, his movements hard enough to splash paint on the brown grass. Why the hell couldn’t Alfred leave well enough alone? Why did he have this enduring hate for Jake and his family?

He rolled a section of paint onto the wall. Then another. It didn’t matter why Alfred hated him. He would probably never stop. But Jake didn’t need Alfred to like him. He just needed him to back off. All Jake wanted to do was do right by James. He needed to get this camp going. It was the only way he could make things right.

For the second time that day, Jake had an uninvited thought about his mother. She’d tried to make things right with him, after James had died. He’d told her to get lost. Not in so many words, but he’d wanted nothing to do with her.

After she’d left him and James behind, she’d disappeared for a whole year, coming back a few days before Christmas to give him and James their mediocre gifts. She’d given James a pair of slippers two sizes too small. Jake had gotten a baseball, despite the fact that he had zero interest in playing. She didn’t even know he’d been doing track at school; that he held the record for the eighth grade high jump and shot-put. He didn’t know why he’d been devastated she didn’t know that. She hardly knew anything about her own sons when they lived with her.

She’d passed the year after James. Gramps had gone next. Jake had been worried back then that his grandmother might succumb to her broken heart, but it was her mind that began to go instead, as if that was the only way she could survive all her losses.

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