Page 28

Did he? Tea wouldn’t have any idea, given how she gone mostly noncontact with anyone she knew at Wild Pines. “How did you know that?”

“He used to talk to your father about retiring and said 2025 was the year.” Mom sighed. “But I can’t blame him. This…thing happening right now changes a lot of perspectives.”

Tea dug her feet deeper underwater, soft sand lodging between her toes. “I don’t know much. Archer hasn’t talked about it to me. Or about anything, honestly.”

“Are things still weird between the two of you?”

Tea nodded her head, then realized her mother wouldn’t be able to see her. “Yeah,” she whispered in a soft tone, even though there wasn’t anyone around her. It was too early for the cohort to be outside making noise. It was only her and Rhonda, who was down by the docks filling her boat with gas.

“How so?” Mom pried.

She exhaled. “He…doesn’t really talk much. It’s like he has this mask he puts up when he’s around me. He’s too nice, in a charming, cornfed-Midwest-boy kind of way. Like how he would act with all of the adults when we were kids.” She flicked some sand underwater, watching it float to the top of the water, then sink back down. “It’s unnerving, honestly.”

“Well, honey, things between the two of you didn’t go so well that summer—”

“I know,” she interrupted. She didn’t need the reminder.

“Maybe give him some time?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. She really didn’t want to be talking about this anymore. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. I’m trying my best to see if I can get some time off and drive up there in August—”

Tea perked up. “Seriously?”

She listened to her mom laugh, and it was the most beautiful sound. God, she missed her.

“Seriously,” Mom replied. “But don’t get your hopes up quite yet, okay? Trying to get out of the hospital at all is a challenge these days.”

“But there’s a chance?”

Mom hummed. “Yes. A chance.”

Tea smiled and leaned her head back, the sun touching her face. “This is the best news.”

The line went silent on the other end. Tea looked at her phone and realized she lost connection. She held her phone up to the sky, hoping to catch a couple magical bars.

Her phone dinged with a text message from Mom moments later, letting her know she was heading back into her shift.

Tea’s shoulders fell, but then she reminded herself that she could potentially see her mother in less than two months. She grinned, tossing her phone on the chair behind her, and skipped to the cabin for sunscreen. She didn’t even realize she was skipping until she made it back to the cabin, a moment of deep nostalgia flashing before her eyes. It all felt so familiar. For the first time since arriving at Silver Falls, she didn’t hate the feeling.

They were tiptoeing around each other.

After the night they ate pizza and Tea left a complacent Archer on his front porch, the two of them slipped into a cordial, surface-level work relationship. It felt weird seeing Archer in this light, especially when she once knew the side of him that would run around Wild Pines with his brother’s underwear on his head, or cover his entire chest with body paint for the annual corn hole tournament. Adult Archer was too stoic, and it irked her. Even if Tea hadn’t seen him grow up into the man he was now, she was fully convinced that this chill, distant, nice demeanor was a mask for whatever was going on behind it. But he told her she was wrong, and she was in no place to push further. Even if she didn’t believe him in the slightest.

They used to be inseparable. During the off-season when she was back in New Jersey and he in Saint Paul, they kept in touch by sending ridiculous cards to one another throughout the year. Archer sent her a Happy Grandparents Day on her eighth birthday, so she sent a Happy Bridal Shower one on his, and the tradition of sending out-of-context cards stuck—until they both received cell phones and could text each other constantly. She knew so much about him then, and now that she was around him every day, she wished she still knew him that way. If only she hadn’t messed it up so badly.

Her computer let out a bright ding, letting her know she had a new email.

She stood near the lake-facing window as she sipped on the coffee in her mug, her second one of the day thanks to the large, well-insulated carafe that Archer made her every morning. It was one in the afternoon, and the day was cloudy and rainy, but no wind whatsoever. Just a dead, wet, summer day. Everyone was cooped up in their cabins, and after months of having to stay holed up at home, she knew that was likely the last place any of the Wild Pines crew wanted to be.

Another ding from her computer.

She made her way back to Archer’s desk, which she had turned into her workspace over the past couple of weeks. No more chaotic piles of pens and sticky pads and loose pieces of paper with rimmed coffee stains. Everything was in neat folders and piles, the pens placed inside a plastic University of Minnesota water cup she stole from his kitchen.

The first email was a reply from Rhonda, asking if they could add a debriefing of Silver Fall’s new fishing regulations to the agenda that Tea had sent out that morning. She typed a reply, letting her know she would add it to the list.

The second was from the Ten Thousand Lake Loon Committee.