Page 6 of The Last Stars in the Sky
I’m also trying to think of a way to make this whole proposition more appealing—in all my memories of happy times at the cottage, it was never mid-November, the whole world frozen, everything the muted brown of dead things, and soquiet.We should have come here in March, when the sap is running, or, better yet, in summer, when the lake is sparkling and blue andwarm, and the woods open up with birdsong and berries. Unfortunately, that wasn’t when our lives fell apart.
“Is Dad going to get a new job?” Mattie asks unexpectedly, and I hear a note of vulnerability in her voice that makes me both tense and ache.
“Yes,” I reply carefully. “That’s the idea.”
“How can he even find one, if we’re stuck up here?”
“His resumé is with a head-hunter, and once we get the internet going, he’ll able to make some enquiries.” We’d already discussed the logistics of it—making sure the phone and internet work, a short flight from Ottawa to New York if need be, for interviews. If he gets to that stage.
“Why are you so mad at him?” Mattie asks, and I stiffen in surprise.
“I’m not mad at him,” I tell her after a moment, which isn’t exactly true, and, from the look she gives me, Mattie clearly knows it. But why is this about me being mad at him, rather than how Daniel let me—us—down? Not, of course, that I want to frame it that way to Mattie, or even to myself, but still.I’m not the bad guy here, I think, and then quickly remind myself that no one is.
“It’s not his fault he lost his job,” she states, her tone turning truculent, and I draw a deep breath, inhaling cold, fresh air and woodsmoke, letting it both steady and buoy me.
“I know that, Mattie,” I say as gently as I can.
“So?” Another challenge, this one a sneer.
“I told you, I’m not mad at Dad.” At least, I’m trying not to be. It’s the lying that’s been the hardest to take, but some part of me knows I’ve punished him long enough for it. I continue, my tone turning a little repressive, “It’s been a difficult, complicated situation, and we’re working through that. Together.”
She lets out a snort of disbelief and then starts walking away from me in a way that feels deliberately dismissive. I let her go, clenching and unclenching my hands to keep my fingers warm, and to give myself a chance to regain my calm. It’s typical that Mattie wants to blame me, rather than Daniel. She’s always been a bit of a daddy’s girl, and I’m the one who insisted we come up here, away from everything she knew. The fact that she’s been suspended from school is probably my fault, too, in the warped world of her teenaged mind. I should have done my best to bail her out, the way so many parents at her private school do, rather than let her face the school’s wrath for breaking their rules.
A sigh escapes me, long, low, and defeated, and slowly I follow Mattie back to the cottage.
Inside it is warm at least, and there is the disconcertingly loud sound of the TV filling the space, making me want to clap my hands over my ears. It feels so incongruous, sowrong, compared to the peaceful quiet of the morning, the needed stillness, when I allowed myself to begin to hope.
“I got the TV working,” Daniel says jubilantly. “And the Wi-Fi too. I called the satellite company—they just had to flip a switch.”
“So I see.” Mattie has already snatched her phone, swiping at it frantically, looking for the Wi-Fi signal, longing to be plugged in and connected tosomething. I look around for Ruby because I know that she doesn’t like having the news on. So much of it is so grim.
“She’s up in the loft, reading,” Daniel says quietly, and he mutes the TV. I go into the kitchen to see what we can have for dinner. “We need to stay in touch with the world at least a little bit,” Daniel says, as he follows me into the kitchen.
“I know.” I take out a box of macaroni and a hunk of cheese. “It was just a little strange, hearing it blare out like that. I’msure we’ll be glad for it in the long run. One day in and Mattie is already getting bored, I think.”
Daniel rocks back on his heels. “I’ll take a look at the four-wheeler and the truck, see if I can get them started. I’m sure she’d like blasting around on the four-wheeler.”
“Yes, great.” I rest my hands flat on the counter and give him a smile, conscious of Mattie’s accusations, the uncomfortable kernel of truth burrowed inside them that I know I have to dig out and examine. “Thank you, for everything you’re doing. I…I know this hasn’t been easy.”
Daniel nods gruffly, his hands shoved into the pockets of his battered cords. “Well, it hasn’t been easy for you either.”
“No, but…” I take a breath, trying to choose my words with the utmost care, each one both precious and dangerous, because, amazingly, this is the most we’ve talked about this whole situation in months, since the first time Daniel came into the kitchen, hanging his head like a naughty child, scuffing his shoes on the floor.I have to tell you something, he’d said, and I’d stared at him in complete bemusement because I was certain he would never have an affair, so it couldn’t be that, and yet his tone suggested something secret and shameful.
“I haven’t really tried to make it much easier,” I say now, a concession—or a confession? Both, perhaps, and both are needed.
Daniel is silent for a long moment. I go to the pantry for an onion and then start chopping it while he simply stands in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at the floor. From the living room I hear the crackle of the fire, Mattie’s squeal of success as she finally gets her precious Wi-Fi.
“Well…” he says at last, which isn’t much of a response, and yet it tells me a lot. It tells me he agrees with me but is reluctant to say so, and it makes me wonder if I’m not the only one who is still angry.
“Maybe tomorrow we can go into Corville,” he suggests after a moment, and it feels like a kind of truce. “See the sights.”
“The sights of Corville?” I let out a little laugh. “They are few, but sure.” At twenty miles away, with a population of thirteen hundred, it is the nearest town, its main attractions a fair-sized grocery store and a hardware and a feed store and not much else.
“The girls might enjoy it, though.”
“Yes, they might.” And after just one day, they need a break from the boredom?
“Do you remember,” Daniel says quietly, “when we brought the kids here when they were little? It always took a few days to relax into cottage life, you know, the slow pace of it. We’d be edgy and restless for about half our vacation—”
