of the things he did to help was take a long hike in the woods. He was about to do just that when Liz had found him and reminded him about his promise to take her fishing.
So he did. And that had been the mistake.
They’d borrowed the boat from a friend in town, and gone out on the Lake of the Woods. It was a vast body of water, the kind where if you were in the middle, you’d lose sight of shore. On a map it was easy to find. It filled most of the little bump at the top of Minnesota that jutted into Canada.
The boat was a twelve-foot aluminum V-hull with a 9.9-horsepower outboard motor, more than enough power for the lightweight vessel.
Liz tried to engage him several times, but Jake just wasn’t interested in talking. So after a while she gave up, and the only sounds came from the lapping of the water against the hull, and the whiz of their reels as they cast out their lines.
But the argument from that morning was still heavy on Jake’s mind, and he had no patience for sitting in an aluminum tub. After an hour that seemed like a year, he said, “Reel it in. We’re done.”
“But … but we’ve just started,” Liz said.
“We’ve been here long enough.”
“You promised me!”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I kept it. We’re going home. I have things to do.”
He never snapped at her, but he had then. He knew it was wrong at the time, but he was just too worked up to worry about it.
He got his line in first, and stared at her until she secured hers, but he didn’t wait for her to put her pole down before he started the engine and turned the boat for the harbor. He quickly took the motor up to full speed, pushing the small, light boat at quite a clip across the lake.
Liz gripped the edge of the hull. “Slow down!”
But the speed helped release some of the tension that had been burning away at Jake since the fight, so he paid her no attention.
“Jake! Please! You’re scaring me.”
“We’re fine,” he started to say.
But he only got the first word out before Liz shrieked.
The next thing he knew, they were airborne, the boat twisting sideways as it first rose, then fell sharply back toward the lake. Jake, thrown free, hit the water hard, then skimmed across the top before going under.
When he poked his head back up, he was surprised by the silence. He swiveled his head around from side to side. The boat was capsized about twenty feet to his left. Floating behind it was the cooler Liz had brought along, Jake’s fishing pole, the empty fish bucket, and the bright orange life vest Jake had not been wearing.
“Liz!” he yelled.
He didn’t see her. He whipped around in a full three-sixty, but she wasn’t there.
“Liz!”
Unlike Jake, she had been wearing her life vest, so she should have been visible.
“Liz! Where are you?”
He swam toward the boat, worried she was trapped underneath. He dove down under the side of the hull, then came up inside the boat in a small pocket of air. No Liz.
Desperate, he swam out again and took another look around.
“Liz!”
There was something floating about fifty feet back in the direction they’d come. It was long, and low in the water.
“Oh, God. No.”
Jake put his head down and began swimming as fast as he could.
But the image that kept coming to him was that of his brother, Davey’s, lifeless body lying in the back of their car, and his father’s voice, “I said
He didn’t look up until he was only five feet away.
“Liz! Liz!”
He reached out and put a hand on the body. Only it wasn’t a body at all.
It was the trunk of a tree. This must have been what they had hit. If he had been going slower, he would have seen it and steered the boat around it. If he’d listened to his sister, they’d still be on their way to the marina now.
Jake threw an arm over the log, panting.
As the full weight of the crash began to descend on him, he realized how cold the water was. Perhaps that was a blessing. He would die out here, too, and not have to face his parents, his father.
“Jake!”
Jake’s head snapped up. The voice was distant, weak. He looked in the direction from which it had come, but saw nothing.
“Jake!”
The boat. It was somewhere over by the boat.
He pushed off the log and began swimming again, all thoughts of the cold temporarily forgotten. As he neared the upside-down vessel, he stopped for a moment and yelled, “Liz!”
“Jake!” The voice was beyond the boat, but much closer now.
He swam around the end.
“Jake! Over here.”
Another thirty feet beyond the boat was a rectangle of bright orange. A life vest. Liz.
When he reached her, she grabbed on to him, and they both went under for a moment. Jake pulled her loose, then told her, “Just hold on to my hand. I’ll pull you over to the boat.”
“I thought you were dead,” she said as they moved through the cold water.
“Of course I’m not dead.” He forced a smile. “I’d never do that to you.”
When they reached the boat, Jake tried to flip it back over, but was too weak, so he grabbed on and used it as a float. He tucked Liz up against his chest, his other arm around her.
“I’m scared,” she said, her voice shaking with cold.
“Don’t be scared. I’m here. I’ll never let anything hurt you again.”
She was silent for a moment. “Promise …”
“Promise. I’ll never let anything hurt you again.” Then he repeated it, and repeated it again, and again, and again.
He didn’t even hear the other boat approach, two fishermen who had seen the crash from a distance and had come to help.
Exposure kept them in the hospital, Jake for a day and Liz for two. By the time she got home, he was gone.
The day he’d come home from the hospital, Jake had found his father in the barn. He knew this moment was coming. He might have been able to avoid it for a little longer, but in reality he couldn’t do that. He had made his decision and needed to act now. His father looked up at him, then back at whatever it was he was working on without saying a word. Jake wished his father would just yell at him, show some kind of reaction, but ever since the accident, his father hadn’t even spoken to him.
“I’m sorry,” Jake said because he could suddenly think of nothing better to say. He took a step closer to the bench. “It was my fault.”
A grunt.
When Jake didn’t say anything else, his father finally set down the wrench he was holding and looked at his stepson. “What are you expecting from me?” he asked. “Forgiveness? You’re going to have to wait a hell of a long time.”
“No,” Jake said. “I don’t expect that. I … I just came to say …”
“What? That you didn’t mean to almost kill my daughter? That you didn’t mean to kill …” He turned back to the bench. “Just leave me alone. Just go.”
