Page 26 of Barefoot Lake

Piper laughs when I groan and flop back dramatically on the cushions. One of the nice things about living in the middle of Boston is that the city has few mosquitoes. There’s just so much nature at Barefoot Lake. I can learn to share space with deer and raccoons, but I wouldn’t shed a single tear if all of the mosquitos died. They’re demons.

“Oh!” Piper darts to the door and presses her back flat against it, twisting to peer out of the window beside it when she hears Jake’s truck start.

“Piper, he can’t see you. Quit being a lunatic.”

She shushes me and remains perfectly still until the sound of the truck fades away down the street. I roll my eyes.

“Let’s go!” she barks like a drill sergeant before darting to the back door, where she shoves her feet in her shoes and scoops up a bucket of cleaning supplies. She opens the screen. “Come on! Go, go, go!”

“Yes, ma’am!” I snap to attention before grabbing an armful of rags from the counter and following her out the back door. She’s very excited about our secret cleaning mission, and I’m grateful for both her help and nonsense. It makes the whole cleaning process go quicker and feel more fun.

Jake’s boat is similar in size to Mom’s and generally tidy, but it has some silt inside and outside, and the falling leaves have begun collecting in various corners. Grateful Bob loaned us his favorite cleaning solutions for the floors, seats, exterior, and various doo-dads in the boat and gave us a quick lesson on what to use where. As long as we keep the boat turned off and don’t mess with any buttons or levers, the job basically just requires elbow grease.

Piper sets us up with music from her phone so our cleaning party can also be part dance party, and we get to work dusting, wiping, and shining every single surface. It takes a couple of hours, but that boat looks beautiful when we’re done, and I’m incredibly proud of the results. Piper and I stand side by side on the dock, admiring the boat that now literally shines.

“Now he’ll for sure fall in love with you,” Piper laughs.

“Girl, don’t make me push you in this lake. It’s cold, but I’ll do it.” I knock my shoulder against hers.

“I was just saying he’ll appreciate it!!” Piper holds up her hands in surrender. “I want to go shower before we head out. Are we all done down here?”

“You go on in. I’m just going to hose down the side again, and then I’ll meet you inside.”

Piper scoops up the bucket of supplies and sodden rags and goes back to my house. I pick up the hose nozzle from the deck and carefully spray down the side of the boat, making sure not to splash water inside. As I maneuver around the post on the dock where the boat is tied, I notice the careful looping of the rope, so each ring secures the prior one. I turn off the hose and wind it back into a neat coil like I found it.

I go back to the rope tying up the boat, remembering Jake’s admonishment from yesterday morning. Was it really only yesterday? The way he tied his boat doesn’t look complicated, and I bet I can figure it out by reverse engineering it. It’ll be one less lake house thing for me to be incompetent at.

Very carefully, I unwind one loop of the rope and redo it the exact same way. I’ve always learned by repetition, so I repeat the process again and again before undoing two loops and redoing those. It’s not a complicated tie or a fancy sailor’s knot, but I make sure each of my loops is as neat and tight as Jake’s were. I continue the process over and over until it’s second nature to loop the rope over and snug it up. I unwind the whole thing, ready to time myself this time because I’m a freak.

I’m startled when my phone buzzes aggressively in my pocket, and the rope falls from my hands.

Crap. It’s probably Piper wondering what’s taking me so long.

I pull the device out and freeze when I see Reid’s name lit up on the screen. I haven’t heard from him in weeks. The phone sits flat on my palm as I let it ring out. I didn’t expect to have contact with him ever again, and it had been a peaceful existence. Even after my phone sends him to voicemail, I remain frozen, staring at the now-dark screen.

I feel small and stupid, loud and obnoxious — all the things he told me I was.

Just seeing his name causes a wave of nausea to wash over me. I’m disgusted by him and by myself for staying with him so long.

I shake my head and tell myself again that he was wrong.

“Alice! You coming?” Piper’s shout from my back patio pulls me out of my stupor.

I adamantly remind myself that Reid’s behavior is not my fault.

I am free. I am strong.

“Sorry!” I jog back up to the house so I can drive Piper to the bus station.

CHAPTER 13

Jake

For the second night in a row, I’m woken up from a dead sleep by my phone noisily rattling around on my nightstand. I bolt upright before remembering Scott is safely sleeping in his room right across the hall. I have to blink a few times to clearly see the bright screen. It’s four in the morning, and the call is from Grateful Bob.

Shit – did something happen?

“Hello?”