Page 6 of I'll Catch You
“Should we go?” Cassie says, hitching the cooler onto her hip. I nod and call out for Brynn to come say goodbye to her aunt, and she appears in the doorway with a face full of unicorn stickers. I laugh and give her ahug.
“Be good for your uncle Mike,” I tellher.
“I’m always good.” She peels a sticker off her face and puts it on my cheek. That’s her little parcel of affection forme.
With my dad’s metal detector in tow, Cassie and I go back out to my car. The sun has mostly set and the only color left in the sky is bleeding into the horizon. We get inside and a silence falls over us as we drive toward Brent’s place. He’s having a party which means Cassie is going to have to be folded up and put into my car at the end of the night. I’m okay with it. I don’t begrudge anyone their occasional vice, especially Cassie. She is fiercely loyal and proved it on the playground when we were twelve and the cute asshole I liked took advantage of my vulnerability and wouldn’t stop stealing my bike. She pushed him off it and with tears in his eyes he admitted he liked me back. Cassie also made me come to my senses and told me any boy who liked me and deserved my time wouldn’t want to steal my bike; he’d want to borrow it and he’d return it in better condition than he tookit.
Technically she’s my cousins’s cousin. My mom’s sister’s husband’s sister’s daughter. On a deeper level, she’s like a sister. She, my biological sister and I were alwaysinseparable.
I take a deep breath as we pull over at the side of Brent’s property. Cassie hops out and I lag behind. My mind keeps bringing me back to thoughts of Peter. He said his offer is different. I’ve heard it all before. He’ll promise he’s going to maintain the restaurant’s integrity or promise it won’t be torn down. I know it’s all a bunch of crap. Really. Because the only way for the restaurant to maintain its integrity is by keeping its prices low and serving the community. Any attempts to make it into some fancy thing people from the city can post online about will damage its existing customer base. And the existing customer base is shrinking by the season. There’s no way to flip the restaurant into something profitable without really, really changing it. I’ve tried. The only way to make money on this land is to tear everything down and turn it into a hotel orcondos.
I make my way down to the beach behind Brent’s house with my metal detector dragging behind me. I didn’t have to reject Peter outright, though I did conduct myself with slightly more decorum than I did with the last guy. It wasn’t my fault, though. He tried to corner me in the kitchen and grab my ass. I had no choice but to do anything I could to get away from him, even if it left him on the floor curled up in the fetal position with his balls in his hands. I locked him inside the restaurant until the cops arrived and I’m lucky he didn’t smash through the glassdoor.
Peter certainly has that guy beat. But still, having a baseline of common decency isn’t something that should earn you anaward.
I turn my metal detector on and start to scan for buried treasure. This was my dad’s prized possession. He loved it even more than any of the treasures he was able to find with it. He always told me the journey is more important than the destination, which is probably why he loved it more than anything he found. Thinking of him, or my mom or sister, still puts a lump into my throat and makes my eyes sting at the corners. I tuck the thoughts away. My only responsibility is to Brynn and to keeping alive the memory of my parents and my sister, Brynn’smom.
I’m quite certain I love Brynn more than anyone could ever love another person, and to do my best by her, I need this Saturday night ritual. I need to do something once a week that’s just for me. Just for me to honor the people who loved her like Ido.
I smile to myself and walk to the shore line where the water laps against the sand. Maybe tonight I’ll find buried treasure hidden outhere.
