Page 117 of Pretty Nightmare

No.

I’m trying to recollect another instance where Indie and I had a whole night together alone, and, disturbingly, the only other time this has happened was when she showed up at my house when she was missing those four years.

I’m sure there were times in years back when I happened to be the only one here with her. There had to be times. But they were short times. Not a whole day. Certainly never a whole night. McKay probably went to the store. Adam was probably on some kind of Company mission.

I might not recollect these times exactly, but there’s something else I do remember about them.

Indie’s attention wasn’t on me. It was on Nathan St. James.

If she was bugging me, back in the day, I would send her outside. “Go play with Nate,” I would say. And she would disappear into the woods and that would be that.

It occurs to me now that we were very naïve with her. Go play outside. Really? In the fucking swamp? Forget the snakes. We focus on them because snakes are just a part of who Indie is. But it’s the gators we should’ve been worried about. There are gators everywhere around here.

She could’ve been eaten alive. Hundreds of times.

We were, for all intents and purposes, terrible parents.

But she’s still here, so…

Downstairs I take a seat at the island and start eating my waffles. They didn’t come from a box. But they didn’t come from Indie, either. Maggie is the one spooning batter into the waffle iron.

I look over at Indie and find her smirking at me. She shrugs. “She likes to cook. Why should I stop her?”

I take another bit of waffle and chew. “So what’s the big adventure plan for today?”

“Oh. Yeah. So… Maggie hasn’t been up the river yet. You know, for ice cream? I want to take her.”

“Take her upriver…?”

“To the river town.”

I shake my head. “Does this town have a name?”

Indie crinkles her nose and shrugs. “I don’t know. We just call it the river town.”

I recall the river town. She has mentioned it during various sessions over the years. But I never did get a name. “Well, how are we supposed to drive there if we don’t know which town it is?”

“We don’t drive, Donovan. We boat.”

“Oh.” I feel slow today. Off kilter, for some reason. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. I get it. A boat. Right. OK. Fine. We can boat up to the river town to get your swampy ice cream. Even though I’m pretty sure McKay has ice cream in the freezer.”

“The ice cream isn’t the point, Donovan. The point is the trip.”

Adam has a bunch of boats. Most of them are small rowboats. But there is one slightly bigger fishing boat with an outboard motor and a twenty-footer that we took to the Gulf for Indie’s birthday.

I expect her to head towards that one, but Indie looks at the small fishing boat with longing.

And then I remember something else about boats around here. She’s looking at it like that because that’s not our boat. It’s Nathan’s.

“I think we might be driving,” I tell her.

But Indie walks over to the boat and starts pushing it through the sand towards the river. “Help me, Mags,” she calls over her shoulder.

They are both wearing cut-off denim shorts and tank tops. Sneakers on their feet. And for a moment I get lost in them. They are so alike, Maggie could be Indie.

Except Indie was never that young when she lived here.

When Indie was six she was… in training.