“Brad?” My voice quavered with emotion.

“Tish, are you alright?”

I laughed into the mouthpiece. “Yes. I’m just glad to hear your voice.” I laughed again to hide my feelings. “Hey, remember the day we went shopping for garage door openers?”

He gave a quiet chuckle. “Oh, man. What were we thinking?”

I smiled and closed my eyes as I relived the afternoon we’d spent at the home improvement center in Flint, just north of Rawlings. We’d gone to buy his-n-hers openers for our own separate detached garages. But somehow we’d gotten distracted on the way to the hardware department and ended up in kitchen cabinets, choosing our favorite styles and colors. He picked a medium hickory with an arch top, I picked a light oak square top. We laughed at our differences, together choosing a lighter arched hickory as our joint favorite. We did the same thing in the bath department, then the lighting department, and finally the whole store, until we built an entire house for ourselves.

“Yeah,” I sighed into the phone, “what were we thinking?”

In the end, we bought our separate garage door openers and drove home to our separate houses and went to sleep in our separate beds and woke up to our separate brews of coffee, which we drank alone each morning in our separate kitchens.

I swallowed hard so I could speak. “Hey,” I said, “did you ever think it might have been fun—to build a house together?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I thought about that. It would have been a lot of fun.”

Then why don’t we do it, I wanted to say. Why don’t we figure out a way to get together and make it work?

Instead, I made a little grunt through my tears. “What do you think happened to that idea, anyway?”

He paused a moment. “We decided to just be friends.”

I nodded, wiping my face. “Just friends” didn’t get married and have babies and build houses together. No, “just friends” called each other on the phone every once in a while. Just like we were doing now. I tried not to sniffle into the receiver. “Thanks for being my friend, Brad. It really means a lot to me.”

Comforted in the knowledge that he was at least still my good buddy, I relaxed a little. We talked for over an hour. I could almost hear the dinging of a cash register at my cell phone company as each minute passed, but decided not to let my usage minutes rule my relationships.

I mentioned my great-grandmother’s death scare, my grandfather’s former career, and my cousin’s take on life.

“Your family sound like good people. I’m glad they’re there for you.”

He said it like such a true friend. I wanted to think that underneath the words he was really saying, “I love you.” But that would have been reading too much into it.

“Good night, Tish.”

Brad’s gentle farewell dredged up that gush of agony.

“Night.”

I sniffled and disconnected. Then I carted myself off to bed.

15

The weeks that followed brought an amazing transformation to the peninsula. Bare branches now glowed bright green as tiny leaves began their temporal journey. New grass poked through last year’s tangle of dried yellow blades. Each new morning dawned crisp and bright as the sun drew closer to Port Silvan.

It was the first Thursday of May. I stood on the ramshackle front deck, careful to avoid the rotted sections. It was warm enough for a sweatshirt and my navy windbreaker. Just beyond my perch, small brown birds twittered in and out of the brush. Farther out, Valentine’s Bay stretched smooth and blue in front of me. I savored the scent of newly warmed soil laced with cool lake breeze. I had a hard time imagining ever making a move back to civilization.

In fact, tea with Candice was the maximum human interaction I wanted today. Afterward, I planned on getting intimate with the local worms and grubs as I dug up a section of yard for a flowerbed. Besides, burying my hands in dirt up to my elbows would take my mind off the significance of the day’s date. But then again, burying anything was probably the exact thing I should be avoiding.

I made the drive to Candice’s house, memorizing every new and brilliant spring creation along the way.

She waved from the porch as I pulled up. A gust of wind pushed at the sides of her wide-brimmed straw hat. She tightened the black polka-dot scarf that kept it from blowing away.

“Hello!” I called as I approached the house.

“Happy Thursday.” She kissed my cheek. “I can’t hug you until I’ve washed up. I’ve been getting the beds ready.”

I looked at the rectangles of newly turned soil on either side of the steps. “What are you planting?”

“Nothing yet,” she said. “Not until Memorial Day. That’s the rule of thumb around here.” She held the door open for me. I waited in the parlor while she washed. A few minutes later she served up the tea.

“It’ll be iced tea soon enough, won’t it?” Candice said.

“I know.” I took a sip. A hint of lemon tickled my tongue. “This winter has flown by. Just when I got settled in Rawlings, it was time to make the move to Port Silvan. And now summer’s almost here.”

“What projects do you have planned for the warmer weather?” Candice nibbled a circle of rye topped with cream cheese and a cucumber.

I reached for a tiny tuna on wheat. “The porches need all new decking and the log siding needs restoration. I’ll be going through a truckload of bleach to kill the mold and get the logs back to their original color. Then of course I have to stain everything.”

Candice knit her brows. “Is that really something you can handle on your own? That place is huge. You’ll be spending your summer up on a ladder.”

I smiled to reassure her. “It’s all part of the job. And it’s a great excuse to get outdoors in sunny weather.”

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing. Jim Hawley could probably finish the project in a week. Maybe you should think about letting him help you.”

I waved a hand to reject her offer. “No, no. I can handle it.” After all, I didn’t want to get the place fixed up too quickly. What excuse would I have for sticking around Port Silvan if everything was done by September? And figuring out my mother’s life wasn’t like baking a cake. It was more like refinishing a piece of fine furniture. The old varnish had to be removed layer by layer until the true wood was revealed. Only time and patience could bring an accurate depiction of my mother.

Candice and I talked more about my renovation schedule. Then the mantel clock bonged.

“Is it that time already?” I stood to go.

Candice gathered the cups and saucers and set them on the tray. “I forgot to mention that Drake Belmont was arrested yesterday. Had you heard?”

My hand flew to my throat. “Is Missy alright? He didn’t hurt her, did he?” I could kick myself for not forcing my way into Melissa Belmont’s life instead of letting her dictate a code of silence.

“From what I gather, he was picked up for possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, or something like that.”

I closed my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “As long as Missy and the kids are okay, that’s what matters. Hopefully she can leave safely now that he’s in jail.”

Candice arched a doubting eyebrow. “We’ll see. Some women are tenacious about staying in an abusive situation even when the way out is staring them in the face.”

I pursed my lips. I hated that Candice always thought the worst of Missy. “I know she’ll do the right thing.” I turned to go. “See you next Thursday,” I called over my shoulder.

As I drove toward home, I tossed around the bright possibilities for Missy now that Drake was sitting in a jail cell. I’d give her a call just so she’d know I was there for her if she needed anything.

I crossed Cupid’s Creek. Over the treetops to the left, a tower of smoke billowed skyward. I squinted, trying to pinpoint its origin. My heart plunked to my hips. My house was the only structure in the area. I stepped on the gas. My house was burning down.

I skidded onto my driveway and gunned the engine. I gripped the steering wheel, trying to stay in the seat as the vehicle bounded through potholes.

The stench of smoke blasted my nose as I neared the source. “No, no, no.” Not my house. It was my childhood, my memories. It was all my tools and enough stuff to fill an SUV.

How could this be happening? I couldn’t have left the iron on, since I didn’t own one. I hadn’t done anything different today than any other day.

I turned the last corner and slid to a stop, blinded by a cloud of gray. My eyes watered and my lungs burned. The wind shifted. Through the hazy air, I could see that my cottage was still there. Still in one piece. It wasn’t burning down.

Instead, the garden shed blazed orange and blue. Thick black smoke rose from curling shingles. As I watched, the roof collapsed and flames rose to new heights. There went my landscaping plans. There went the hangout some buyer would have deemed irresistible.

I slammed my palms on the steering wheel in frustration, then reached for my cell phone. I dialed 9-1-1.

The dispatcher answered on the second ring.

“My name is Tish Amble and I’d like to report a fire.”

I gave the operator the location, then went in search of a garden hose hopefully stashed in the crawl space. I found a bucket instead. Fifteen pails of water later, help arrived. The Port Silvan volunteer firemen doused the flames in a matter of minutes.

A waist-high square of rocks was all that remained when the smoke cleared.

One of the firemen approached. His black and yellow coat hung to the top of tall boots.