Meet Me at the Lake

I spend almost a full week with Will and the girls in the city. I make pancakes for Sofia in the morning and drive her to summer camp so Will can catch up on sleep and Annabel can get to work early. In the afternoons, Will and I take meandering walks through Toronto. We walk and we talk, and we come up with a plan for trying to make things work long-distance. Will is going to visit me on weekends as often as possible, we’ll talk in the evenings after dinner, and he pledges to send me a photo whenever he wears an apron.

I give Peter my mom’s last diary as soon as I get back to the resort. I tell him I don’t think she would mind if he knew what she’d been thinking all those years ago, and it might be a pleasant surprise. For me, reading Mom’s journal wasn’t quite like hearing her again—the Margaret Brookbanks I knew was different from the young woman who wrote in its pages. But I think for Peter, it might be. He knew that young woman—chatty and optimistic and impatient. He loved that Maggie like he loved the version of Mom I knew.

I stay busy. I join Whitney and Cam’s monthly game night and spend time with Jamie, hunched over the kitchen table, reviewing blueprints for his dream home. I visit Peter in the pastry kitchen almost every morning, and one sunny day in late October, I hear music before I enter. Peter is playing Anne Murray. I befriend the owners of the record store in town. I buy a guitar and watch lessons on YouTube. I imagine becoming both brave and decent enough to make a surprise performance at the dance and talent show next August. And I work my ass off.

But in the middle of the night, alone in the house, a familiar ache returns to my belly. I creep to the window and look out at Cabin 20, but a light never shines through the dark. Will is never there.

As the months pass and the snow falls and the moon casts a pale glow over the frozen bush, the ache turns sharp with awareness. I don’t want to miss Will anymore.

On New Year’s Eve, we sway on the dance floor. The DJ is playing the song I requested. It’s Elvis and it’s corny, but it’s also exactly right for the moment I ask Will if he’d consider living here one day. The room sparkles with candles and Christmas lights and the oversized disco ball Jamie talked me into hanging, but nothing is as bright as the smile on Will’s face.

It takes time for him to rearrange his work to make that possible, but in May, a year following Mom’s death, Will moves into the house with me. The sunroom is now his office. My home is now his. When I go downstairs in the morning, the coffee is strong and the music is playing, and Will is in the kitchen.

Much to his relief, Annabel agrees to stay at his place in Toronto. He still worries, and she calls or texts both of us almost daily with cooking questions, but Will commutes to the city for work at least one day a week, so he sees the girls regularly. I decorate the guest bedroom in dark purple for Sofia—she’s spending a couple weeks with us later this summer. The closet is still stuffed with Mom’s party frocks. Sofia says she’s too old for dress-up, but I saw the way she eyed the pink sequined bolero. I bet I can talk her into at least one tea party with Peter and me.

I hire a new executive chef and rename the restaurant Maggie’s. Of all the changes I make to the resort, this is the one I love best. Sometimes, when I want to feel close to Mom, I go to the dining room. But when I miss her most, I find myself wandering down to the family dock. I sit in the chair on the left and look out at the lake and update her on everything that’s happening. Sometimes, I can almost hear her say, We’re so lucky.

Even though the resort is poised for a good year, some days are too long and too hard and just plain suck. But now Will is there when I come home. While he cooks dinner, he reminds me of all the things I’ve accomplished and how much I love what I do, and I stare at him wearing Mom’s apple-print apron, not quite sure someone so wonderful can be real.

I’m sleeping better than I have in a long time, but there are times when I wake just after two a.m. and find that Will’s not beside me. I tiptoe downstairs and pull the pencil out of his hand and bring him back to bed. If Will can’t sleep, he draws.

Every day feels special, but June fourteenth is a gift.

Will and I paddle to the strip of shoreline where we sat together almost a year ago. Unlike then, the sun glitters off the lake—not a single cloud interrupts its rays. Sunglasses are necessary. Will has packed a picnic basket and a bottle of champagne, and we raise our plastic cups to the anniversary of the day we met.

We relax with our feet in the water and our pinkies linked in the sand, reminiscing about that June fourteenth. When the breeze picks up, it blows Will’s hair across his brow, and my breath catches. I’ve convinced him to grow it out a little, and he looks just like how he did at twenty-two. Relaxed and rumpled and gorgeous. For the thousandth time over the past year, I think I might be hallucinating. It’s hard for me to believe that we’re finally here together, for good.

I took a leap when I showed up on Will’s doorstep last August. I told myself if there was one person worth fighting for, it was Will, and if there was a relationship worth the effort, it was the one we had started to build. Because even though we hadn’t put a label on it, Will and I were building something. I told myself we could make it stronger.

When the sun gets hot, Will pulls off his shirt, and I stare at the ridges of his stomach and the grooves of his hips and the black of his ink until he tosses his V-neck in my face.

“What?” I laugh.

“Your tongue is hanging out.”

“Pfff. I was simply admiring the art.”

Will pulls me to my feet, and I take his hand and press my lips to the newest tattoo, a small fern frond on the inside of his wrist, but then Will begins to unbutton my shorts.

“Let’s swim,” he says, planting a kiss on my nose.

We wade out to where the lake is deep and cool and float on our backs, shutting our eyes to the sun. Eventually Will pulls me toward him and we kiss as the water dances around our waists, and he slips his finger under the edge of my bathing suit and does the thing with his thumb.

After we’ve dried off and finished our sandwiches and the lemon squares Peter knows Will likes best, I begin packing our things into the canoe. I set the basket in the middle of the boat, and when I turn around, Will is kneeling in the sand, a tiny green velvet box in his hand. But before he says anything, I throw my arms around his neck and tackle him to the ground. I kiss him through tears and he murmurs something about not having said anything, but I’m too overcome to care, because Will Baxter is my favorite person, and I’m going to keep him forever.

“Don’t you want to see the ring?” Will says, laughing. I tell him I don’t give a rat’s ass about the ring. All I want is to hear that happy sound bursting from his mouth every day of my life.

“It’s kind of meaningful to me,” he says.

I pull back, blinking at Will underneath me, my throat tight.

He holds my face between his hands. “Stand up for a second, okay? There are things I want to say.”

I get to my feet and Will kneels in front of me, holding the sand-covered box. A plain gold band sits inside. I can’t believe I didn’t notice he wasn’t wearing it.

“I had it resized,” he says, taking his grandfather’s ring out. “It’s the most important thing I own, and I didn’t think you’d want anything sparkly.”

Will tells me how lucky he is to have met his soulmate eleven years ago, and even luckier to have found me again. He tells me I’m his best friend. He tells me he never thought it was possible to be as happy as he is now, with me. He tells me I’m the bravest person he knows. He tells me he loves my loyalty and my playlists and my nose. He tells me he loves me best of all. We kiss and we cry and we hug, and we tumble around in the sand until a group of teenagers in a boat start whistling and honking their horn.

There’s a group of people waiting for us on the dock. I squint as we paddle closer, trying to make out their shapes. Sofia is obvious. I can see her purple shirt, the one she and Will tie-dyed, from way out on Smoke Lake. We’re far from shore, but she’s already jumping and waving.

“I could only keep so much a secret,” Will says when I turn around from my spot in the front. “You know what Annabel’s like.”

I do know what Annabel’s like. From the moment we announced that Will was moving here, she’s been plying me with bridal magazines and links to floral designers and Pinterest inspiration boards. She likes an occasion almost as much as Jamie does, and once she has a hankering, she’s impossible to deter. She’s more stubborn than Will, and though she’d never admit it, she’s as protective of him as he is of her. I told her planning a wedding was the last thing on my mind, and more important, I didn’t want to do the bride thing, ever. I’m not opposed to marriage, but weddings? I thought the vein in her forehead might burst.

I turn back to face the resort. We’ve drifted in a little, and I can spot Annabel as well as Peter’s bulky frame. Jamie’s there, too, standing beside Whitney and Cam.

They reach for us before we’ve even tied up the canoe. Sofia wraps herself around Will’s waist once he’s out of the boat and Annabel gives him a one-armed hug, pulling me in with the other.

Someone else curls around my back, and I can tell from the smell of her shampoo it’s Whitney.

“Get in here,” she says, and I feel more arms lock around us in a jumbled group hug.

“I’m throwing you an engagement party,” Annabel says. “Just try to stop me.”

The girls want to take the canoe out, and as the crowd disperses, Peter and I watch Will help them climb in.

“I think I got a good one,” I say to Peter. I know he agrees. Since Will’s moved here, not a week goes by when Peter doesn’t deliver us some kind of lemony dessert.

“You both did,” he says. “Well, I better get back to the kitchen.” He gives my forehead a kiss. “Congratulations, pea.”

As the girls begin to paddle, Will and I sit at the edge of the dock, where we were supposed to meet ten years ago. Annabel and Sofia go around and around in circles—neither one of them has got the hang of canoeing.

“They have no idea what they’re doing,” Will says.

“No, they really don’t,” I agree, grinning as Sofia leans over the side to splash her mom with her hand. Annabel shrieks and edges over on the bench. The boat rocks.

“They might tip,” Will says, and I pat his knee.

“They’re not going to tip,” I tell him. “And if they do, we’re here.”

Then, with a wicked smile, Annabel raises her paddle and swooshes it through the water, drenching her daughter. Sofia squeals in delight. Will laughs and brings his arm around me, tucking me tight against his side.

We sit there, together, until the girls get bored with the canoe, and they wander over to the beach.

We sit there, my head on Will’s shoulder, until the sun sinks low in the sky, painting the lake in purple and gold.

We sit there for hours, Will Baxter and me, making plans for the future, the dreams that we’ll share.

I look at our feet dangling in the water, then up at Will. “Sometimes I can’t believe we’re here,” I tell him.

“I know the feeling,” he says. “But here we are, Fern Brookbanks. Right where we’re supposed to be.”