Every Summer After

We spread Sue’s ashes on a Friday evening in July. It’s taken a full year for Sam and Charlie to work themselves up to letting her go. We choose this time of day because on the extraordinarily rare occasion that Sue was home with the boys on a summer evening, she’d serve dinner on the deck, right as the sun began to cast its light on the far side of the lake, and sigh in weary delight.

“I don’t know if it’s more beautiful because I hardly ever get a chance to see it this time of year, or if it’s always this special,” she once said to me as we set the table. “It’s the magic hour.”

And it does feel magical as Sam and I, hand in hand, follow Charlie down the hill to the lake. How the golden glow illuminates all the details of the tree line and shore that you can’t see when the sun is high overhead. How the water seems to still as if it, too, is taking a break from the day’s activities for cocktail hour and a family barbecue. How we’re walking across the wooden plans of the Floreks’ dock and climbing into the Banana Boat.

Both Charlie and Sam agreed the boat needed to be part of today, that we would take a trip in their dad’s boat to say goodbye to their mom. They had tried to fix it up together on the few weekends in the spring when we were all up from the city. I had been skeptical of this grand plan, but Charlie insisted that they’d done it once before and could do it once again. Sam had declared that he was a lot handier than he used to be. Neither of which turned out to be true.

On the long weekend in May, I found them in the garage, covered in grease, half-drunk and walloping the side of the boat in frustration. They hauled it into the marina the next day.

Now, Charlie takes the driver’s seat and Sam sits in the chair beside him, and we head out to the middle of the lake. I watch them from the bench in the front, the bench I sat on all those years ago when I first realized that I had a crush on my best friend. Today Sam is wearing a suit—another thing he and Charlie agreed on was that this was an occasion that required jackets and ties, despite how they both hated them. Sam looks so grown-up, something that still occasionally takes me by surprise, and also so much like that skinny science nerd I fell in love with.

He sees me staring, and gives me a lopsided smile, mouthing the words I love you over the roar of the engine. I mouth them back. Charlie catches our exchange and belts Sam on the arm as he turns the motor to idle. We’re the only ones out on the water.

“This is no time for flirting, Samuel,” Charlie says with a wink in my direction.

We all live in Toronto now. Sam and I in a little rental condo downtown and Charlie in another, swankier one he owns in a posh neighborhood five stops north on the subway line. Between Charlie’s long hours at work, Sam’s shifts at the hospital, and my writing (which Sam convinced me to try, just try, and I now wrestle with it in the predawn hours before heading into the office), we don’t have as much time together as we’d like. And we do like having time together. It’s a revelation and a relief—one that has come with uncomfortable moments and a couple of arguments, especially during those early get-togethers—but here we all are, wind in our hair, sun on our faces, zipping out to the center of Kamaniskeg Lake in the Banana Boat.

It’s taken a lot of work for Sam and me to get here as well—for us to find our footing as a couple, to trust each other, and for me to fight off the persistent voice that tells me I’m not good enough, that I don’t deserve him or my happiness. We’ve snapped at each other, we’ve flung accusations around, and we’ve yelled, but we’ve both stuck around and cleaned up the mess. We’ve also been friends. And that’s the part that’s been easy—laughing, teasing, rooting for each other. We can still speak to each other without speaking. And we’ve made good use of Sam’s collection of horror movies.

Sam is holding on to the urn, a smoothly polished teak vessel that seems too small to contain everything that was Sue. Her smile. Her confidence. Her love.

“So?” he asks his brother. “Are you ready?”

“No,” Charlie replies. “Are you?”

“Not at all,” Sam says.

“But it’s time,” Charlie tells him.

And Sam agrees. “It’s time.”

Sam heads to the rear while Charlie stays in the driver’s seat, watching his brother remove the lid and brace his legs against the back of the boat. Sam looks at us over his shoulder, first at me and then at Charlie, and nods.

“Hit it,” he says.

Charlie pushes the throttle down, and the boat takes off across the water. Sam raises the urn up and out, tipping it so Sue’s ashes fly through the air behind the boat, a faint gray streak across the bright blue water. And in seconds, she’s gone.

We head back to the house in silence, Charlie leading the way and Sam beside me, his arm around my shoulders. We can hear the music and laughter before we’ve made it halfway up the hill.

There will be a few dozen people inside the Floreks’ home—a big party, just like Sue would have wanted. There will be Dolly and Shania over the speakers. There will be an excess of food and beer and wine. There will be pierogies made by Julien, who bought the Tavern at a “family discount” from Charlie and Sam. There will be dozens of guests—all the people who loved Sue, including my parents, and some who didn’t get the chance to but would have, like Chantal. And there will be a flash of red hair. Because one of the hardest things I did over the last year was apologize to Delilah. I expected her to be polite but unaffected when I met her at a coffee shop in Ottawa—it was all so long ago. I didn’t expect her to circle her arms around me and ask what the hell took so long.

And later tonight, when everyone has left and it’s just Sam and me in our pj’s in the basement, there will be popcorn and a movie playing in the background and a ring in an old wooden box with my initials carved on top. It will be made from twisted threads of embroidery floss that match the faded bracelet on my wrist. And I will get down on one knee and ask Sam Florek to be with me. To be my family. Forever.