As they walked down the dirt path, Nathan filled
them in on who they were about to meet. Details didn’t
stick—who was a first-generation ponder, who was second-
generation, but what was clear to Lane was that he spoke
about these people as if they were relatives he rarely saw, but remained fond of.
“It’s run like a co-op,” he said as he bushwhacked
some of the branches that had encroached on the path
over the winter. “People take on different jobs depend-
ing on what they want to do. I used to be in charge of
checking bacteria levels. Don’t laugh,” he said after Lane did. “Me and Leo did it together. We were like a couple
of mad scientists, collecting samples in test tubes. It was fun. Everything was fun. Utopia on the pond. Until it
wasn’t.” He didn’t offer details and Lane didn’t ask. They shared that, a high tolerance for silence.
“First to arrive,” Nathan said when they reached the
building. “Did I mention there’s no electricity?” He pushed opened the swollen door. “By unanimous vote. It’s in the
DNA of the place. The more rustic the better. Pretend
pioneers. Here we go.” He pointed to a line of lanterns
that stood against the far wall, like soldiers at attention.
“That’s our solution to no electricity.” He reached inside his pocket and scooped out a handful of double-A batteries, which he offered to Henry. “Want to help me put in
new ones? Back in the day, people were forever forgetting
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to turn the lanterns off. Beginning of the season, they
were always dead. I doubt that’s changed.”
Henry opened his hands to receive the batteries and
under Nathan’s light supervision, replaced the batteries
in all the floor lanterns. Nathan found a stepladder in
a storage closet, which he used so he could change the
batteries of the Chinese-style paper lanterns strung across the ceiling. When all the lanterns were on, the main
room glowed.
“At least something is like I remembered,” he said.
“Magical.”
They turned at the sound of branches cracking under
feet, followed by bursts of laughter.
“Here they come.” Nathan reached for Lane’s hand
and immediately pulled away. “I’m sorry. I don’t know
why I did that.”
She didn’t know why either. The doors flung open. A
crowd swarmed in. Lane could hear the news traveling.
“Nathan’s here.” “Nathan’s back.” “I thought Nathan
was dead.” “Who’s Nathan?”
“There you have it,” Nathan whispered to her. “Old
gang thought I was dead. New gang never heard of me.”
A man was fast approaching. “I have no idea who this is.”
“Nathan Knapp,” the man said.
“Hey,” Nathan replied.
“I knew you’d come back. People said you wouldn’t,
but I knew you would.” He let out a hearty laugh and
Lane could see it on Nathan’s face. The laugh had told
him who this was.
“It’s great to be back, Stretch,” Nathan said. “It’s great to see you looking so well.”
“I’m still alive, I’ll admit that. Who have we here?
Wife Number Two?”
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Nathan laughed. “No. I’m not that lucky. This is my
friend Lane. She’s renting the house for the summer. I’m
camping out down at the cottage. Last hurrah and all.
That’s my friend Henry.”
“Nice to meet you.” Stretch offered a hand to Lane and
then to Henry. “How old are you, son? Nine? Sixteen?
I’m not good with numbers.”
“He’s six,” Lane said.
“Six,” Stretch said. “Great age. Great age.” He called
to someone who’d just walked in. “Brian, look who’s
back. Hey—do we actually have all the originals here
tonight? Well, first wives excluded. And Aggie.” He
looked around. “Aggie’s not here, is she?”
A woman giving Nathan a welcome-back hug stepped
aside and said, “I hope not.”
The door continued to creak open and bang shut,
letting in the scent of bug spray and pie. Exclamations
continued. “Wow!” “I didn’t think I’d see the day!” “Now
the party can begin!”
h h
h h
Nathan had peeled away from the well-wishers long
She held Henry’s hand as they walked into the back room.
The first to spot them was a little girl, who tugged the
boy standing next to her and then pulled him along so
he’d skip over with her.
The girl spoke first. “Are you new? I’m Esther. We’re
seven. This is Russell. He’s my brother. We’re twins.
Who are you?”
Lane started counting back from ten, which was what
Doctor Bruce told her to do so that Henry would have
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a chance to answer if he chose to. Waiting was harder
than people might think. She only got to seven. “This
is Henry.”
“This is Henry,” Esther trumpeted to the crowd.
“Come on, Hen,” she said. “We’re making seaweed
notecards.”
Lane followed Henry, who followed Esther and Russell,
to a long table, on top of which sat several basins filled with water. A dozen children were standing around the
table. A woman on a stool was explaining the art project.
“The main thing you have to do is stare,” the woman
said. “Just stand and stare for a good long while. Who
knows how to stare?”
The children showed off their best efforts at unblink-
ing stares. To Lane’s surprise, Henry joined in, making
his eyes go bug-eyed wide. She laughed out loud and
then apologized.
The woman flashed Lane a smile. “No matter how
much fun you have fishing for seaweed here,” she told
the children, “you’ll have more fun in the sea. This is for argument’s sake.”
“I’m not arguing,” a boy yelled.
The woman smiled. “Good. Now keep staring until
a clump of seaweed speaks to you.”
“How does seaweed speak?” Esther asked, and Russell
added, “What does it say?”
“It’s going to say, Pick me,” the woman told them. “It’s going to say, I’m the perfect one for you. Don’t listen here.”
She tapped her ear. “Listen here.” She pointed to her heart.
Several children exchanged doubtful looks. Henry
looked captivated.
“Once you hear the seaweed talking to you, scoop
it up.” She plunged her arm into the water and swiftly
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pulled out a clump. “That’s step one. Catching it and
laying it out on your blank card. But try to take a picture in your mind of how it looked in the water because that’s
the shape you’re going to try to stretch it back to. With
a gentle touch. You don’t want it to break. Who wants
to try?” She pointed to Henry. “You?”
Lane opened her mouth to decline on his behalf, but
before she could, Henry stepped forward
and dipped his
hand into the water.
“Excellent choice,” the woman said when Henry
pulled out a dripping seaweed bouquet.
“Lane?” She turned to see Nathan in the doorway. He
motioned her over. “Want to come meet some neighbors?”
She looked at Henry, who waved. She walked over
and took him aside. “I’m going to have a quick word with
the art counselor, okay? To let her know that you might
not feel like talking tonight and that’s okay.”
Henry shook his head.
“I won’t make a big deal about it.”
He shook it again.
“Are you sure?”
Henry let out an exasperated sigh and folded his arms
across chest. He was unequivocally sure. He did not want
to her to say anything to the counselor.
“Got it.” She smiled. “Message received.”
h h
h h
Back in the main room, Nathan filled her in on the few
people he recognized. “I wish I understood why some
people I recognize and others I don’t. It’s unpredictable.”
He nodded toward a couple standing at the drinks table.
“That’s Erica and Mitchell Roth over there. I used to rent 298
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my house to them until Teddy Peabody died. The Peabody
house is right across from mine. The Roth’s made an
offer on it before the funeral. They wanted it that bad.”
A laugh exploded from across the room. “Ah. Harvey
Schwartz. Here’s all you have to know about Harvey: he
once caught a four-hundred-and-thirty-six-pound tuna.
All the times I’ve heard him tell that story, he’s never
once rounded it down to four hundred and thirty- five.
I think it takes him longer to tell the story than it took him to catch the fish.”
“Is that Nathan?” A woman, hands on hips, shook
her head. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“Hey,” Nathan said. “This is Lane Meckler. She’s
renting my house.”
“Nice to meet you,” the woman said. “I’m Wren. I live
in the house next door.” She gave Nathan an affection-
ate punch on the arm. “I haven’t decided if I’ve forgiven
you yet. Don’t trust this guy,” she warned Lane. “He’ll
tell you he’s your best friend one day and the next day,
he’ll walk past you on the street like he’s never seen you before. Not to mention out of the blue, he’ll pack up his
bags and disappear for—how long has it been?”
“Ten years,” Nathan admitted.
“Unbelievable. Simon,” she called across the room.
“My husband,” she told Lane. “Simon, come here and tell
this lovely newcomer why Nathan is the worst.”
Wren’s husband joined them and Lane watched
as they did an awkward dance, Simon going in for a
hug, Nathan extending his hand, both of them miss-
ing, then switching, so out of sync it almost looked
choreographed.
“For god’s sake,” Wren said. “Just kiss each other on
the lips and get it over with.”
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Simon seemed to take the suggestion literally, but
Nathan laughed it off.
A woman rang a bell and called out, “Meeting time.
Take a seat, please.”
Wren and Simon stepped away and Nathan’s smile
slipped off his face, replaced by what Lane thought looked like regret.
h h
h h
It seemed to Lane that on the surface the activity was to
go around the circle and catch everyone up on all the
good news that had happened over the winter. But if there
were any events that were not celebratory, they were not
being shared. The news was all good. The smiles were
all bright. Still, Lane felt an undercurrent of tension. She stopped listening to the updates and watched the faces
instead.
A moment later all the faces turned, as one, to the
sound of a disturbance. She turned too, and saw Henry
charging out of the back room. He looked distraught. The
twins came running behind him, followed by Amanda,
who introduced herself as one of the counselors.
Henry raced into Lane’s arms. “What happened?” she
asked. She moved her ear close to his mouth to hear his
answer, but he stayed silent.
“He got scared,” the counselor said. “I’m really sorry.”
“It was because of Griffin,” Esther piped up.
“He was outside the window,” her brother added.
“He looked like this.” He opened his mouth and panted
like a dog to demonstrate.
“He’s not dangerous,” Amanda said. “His bark is
worse than his bite.”
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This was something new. Henry had never been afraid
of dogs before. She leaned close and asked if he wanted
to go home. He didn’t speak or nod but she felt a slight
shift in his weight. He wanted to go.
The circle talk started again. Across the room a woman
began describing how many dumpsters it took to clear
out her house over the spring. “We downsized,” she said,
“but we did not down grade. I have pictures. Want to see?”
She handed her phone to the person next to her.
Lane leaned over and quietly told Nathan they were
going to leave. He nodded and started to stand up. She
put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Stay. Catch up
with your old friends. We’ll be fine. I can retrace our steps.
Turn left at the T and follow the path to the house. That
right?” It was. She turned to Henry. “Ready, buddy?”
He nodded and—was it her imagination? Or did he
say a very quiet, Yes?
Maybe the pond did have a way with people.
301
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Henry learned about Okay Days from Doctor Bruce.
The first time Doctor Bruce asked him if was having an
Okay Day, Henry gave him a shrug. He learned about
shrugs from his mom. She told him a shrug was a good
thing to do if someone asked him a question he couldn’t
answer. She said if he didn’t answer at all, they’d probably keep asking more questions. If he gave a shrug, they’d
probably nod and not ask anything else.
When Henry answered Doctor’s Bruce Okay Day
question with a shrug, Doctor Bruce didn’t nod. He put
on his serious face and explained all the kinds of days
a person could have. He said, “Bad Days are days with
mostly bad parts. Good Days are days with mostly good
parts. Okay Days have some parts good and some parts
bad.” He also told him about the fourth kind of day which
was Super Bad Worst Possible Thing Happened Day.
Doctor Bruce said most people didn’t get more than one
or two of those in their whole life and most six-year-olds didn’t get any.
That made a lot of questions come into Henry’s head.
One question was, if people only get one or two Super
Bad Worst Possible Thing Happened Days, was he was
going to get another one? Would he get it soon? Another
question was, if most six-year-olds didn’t get
any, why did 302
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he get one? He didn’t ask any of the questions, though, because his mouth still wasn’t ready to talk.
After he learned about all the kinds of days a person
could have, Henry started paying attention to his days so
he would know what kind he of day he was having the
next time Doctor Bruce asked. He kept track of the days
on the back of his sketchbook. First he wrote the day—
Monday—then he wrote the kind of day, Good, Bad, Okay or SBWP. SBWP was short for Super Bad Worst Possible.
The day they got to their new house was a Bad Day
because there was so much driving and no one was talking
in the car and then on the ferry Grandma Sylvie started
shivering even though the sun was hot and when they got
to the house where they were supposed to stay, it wasn’t
good and his mom tried to sound like she didn’t care,
but she he could tell she did. Her face was Disappointed.
The next day started out Okay. They went shopping
at a farm stand where there were small green baskets of
tiny strawberries that smelled like candy and vegetables
that were purple, like a bruise, and yellow, like the sun.
After the farm stand they went to the General Store where
they got beach chairs and art supplies and bug spray and
sponges. The sponges were for Grandma Sylvie, who told
his mom, New house, new sponge. When they got home he got to draw so the day ended Good.
The third day was the day he went to the Rec Center.
He thought it was going to be a Good Day because he
liked the part where he got to play with seaweed, but
then it turned into a Bad Day because of Griffin in the
window.
The fourth day was the Fourth of July and they drove
into town and sat on the curb in front of a house that had big American flags in front and a picket fence completely
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covered with more American flags. They watched a long
parade with soldiers and old cars and men wearing skirts
and farm trucks with kids in the back and a float with a
lighthouse on it and a bus with Alice in Wonderland on
it, and people walking llamas and a tiny, tiny horse. The
people on the parade floats threw out candy and his mom
said he could run and get some so he added a new kind
of day to his list: Very Very Good Day.
Now it was the fifth day, which was the day he was
starting camp. He didn’t know yet if it would be Good,
Bad, Okay, SBWP or Very Very Good. He never knew for