The boat slowly turns. Patrick takes a thermos out of his bag.
“Hot chocolate. You guys drink that?” He holds the thermos out and says, “You can share. Take it.”
So I do and I offer it to Birdie, but he shakes his head. I take a drink because I feel like my nose might fall off if I don’t take a small sip. As soon as I do, it reminds me of the hot chocolate Birdie and me bought at the bus station.
What a simple thing a bus ride seems now. It was just Birdie and me trying to get home.
But home is gone. We could go there, and the duplex might still be there, but there would be other people living there. Some other older lady, maybe. Next to some other family.
And now the Quesadilla Ship is gone too.
Patrick sips his coffee and looks out onto the lake.
Birdie hunches into a black-and-navy-blue ball and seems to sleep.
I drink the hot chocolate, feeling a little guilty, like I shouldn’t be enjoying it, but the heat goes straight into the center of me and radiates out. I hold the thermos cup under my nose like Uncle Carl does with his coffee in the mornings.
I wonder if Uncle Carl will ever plug his phone in again.
Suddenly, Patrick’s head shoots up. “Look!” he whispers, pointing to the sky.
It’s a bird, a big one, its wings are outstretched and it circles once, twice above us and then flies toward the other side of the lake before swooping down near the water and then into the trees. Its white head surprises me. I know exactly what kind of bird it is, even though I’ve never seen one in real life until today.
“A bald eagle,” I say, still looking at the trees where it disappeared.
Patrick nods.
He gets his fishing rods out. I look behind me at Birdie to see his reaction to the eagle, but he’s still curled up on the seat with his eyes closed.
Patrick casts the two fishing lines into the water on either side of the boat and hands me one. I don’t know what to do with it, so I just sit there, holding it like he does. I look into the trees, which are now turning from black to dark green from the rising sun. Maybe the eagle will come out again.
It reminds me of the first Wolf Day, and that one wild eye and how I stared at the darkness for a long time after it disappeared hoping to see it again.
“Shouldn’t we be in school today?” I ask.
Patrick reels his line in even though it was only out for like two minutes. “Yes, I would prefer you be in school. But it was important to get out of town today. Get some space from everything.”
“You mean space from Uncle Carl?”
He sighs and casts his line out again. “Carl needs some time alone. And it’s not good to be around him right now.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t need our help?”
“He doesn’t need our help, no. It’s not your job to fix him and I want you and your brother to stay away. And, look, it’s not that big of a town. People talk. It’s best for us to not be in the middle of all that at the moment.”
I’m about to remind him that he said running away doesn’t solve anything when I feel the fishing rod twitch. I look down at it and it twitches again and again. Finally Patrick turns around and all he says is, “Reel it in, not too fast.”
And so I do, and then out pops this spotted yellow fish about as long as a ruler.
“A brown trout,” says Patrick, leaning over to help me with the line.
Birdie sits up and rubs his eyes. “You caught a fish?” he asks.
“I caught a fish,” I say, and I suddenly think of the poem Mama used to recite by Elizabeth Bishop called “The Fish.” She liked to say a couple lines of it when we were out at a seafood restaurant and would always do it like she was reading Dr. Seuss even though the lines didn’t rhyme and the poem was actually pretty solemn. The waiters and waitresses always looked confused, which made the whole thing kind of embarrassing but also funny.
I don’t remember the words to the poem, but I do remember that the fish is freed at the end and I ask Patrick if we can throw the fish back. He nods and undoes it from the line and holds it out to me and I take it from him with both hands without even thinking. It’s slick, cold, and weightier than it looks. I hold it for a moment and then lower my hands into the water. The fish slides back in and quickly disappears. All of a sudden I have that rushing, roller-coaster feeling like I had with Krysten at the library, and before I can stop, my mouth opens and speaks.
“Have you fished your whole life?”
Patrick kind of chuckles and then shakes his head. Maybe it’s what some people call scoffing.
“It was my mama who loved to fish,” he says, still looking down at the water where the trout swam away. “She’d come out to this lake on her own because Dad didn’t like the water and she knew she could be alone out here. She’d bring her coffee and whiskey and these rods. Sometimes me and Carl and our older brother, George, would go with her, but we knew she preferred to be on her own out here. She always came back with
