Meet Me at the Lake
: Chapter 9

“What do you mean, you haven’t googled him?” Whitney waves a diaper in the air.

I’ve convinced her to let me babysit Owen while she and Cam have a date night. It’s only dinner at the Brookbanks restaurant, and the plan is for them to leave the baby with me at the house while they enjoy some alone time, but I still haven’t managed to get them out the door.

They’ve set up Owen’s travel crib, explained the ins and outs of bottle feeding, given me a detailed description of his diaper rash, and handed me a printout of Owen FAQs. She’s tried to make it funny—with headings like, Oh shit, he pooped! Now what?—but it still borders on obnoxious. It’s also completely unlike Whitney.

I look at her, kneeling over Owen, who’s wriggling on the couch sans diaper. She’s wearing a magenta wrap dress that has a discreet panel in the front for breastfeeding. Her boobs are huge. There’s a thin band of sweat around her hairline—the strands by her temple are short, wispy bits that she’s been complaining about. Apparently you lose hair after having a baby and that’s what grows back. Parenthood is changing her in ways I hadn’t noticed, probably in ways she hasn’t, either.

“You know how I feel about creeping on people online,” I say, rummaging in the diaper bag for wipes. I haven’t diapered a baby before, but how hard can it be? “Let me do that, Whit. You’re going to be late for your reservation.”

“Quit changing the subject,” Whitney says, looking at the package in my hand. “You don’t need wipes when it’s just a little pee.”

She finishes wrapping Owen’s bottom and gets off the floor, picking him up with the swift competence of someone who’s done it hundreds of times, which she has—Whitney is a mom. I knew it before, but not the way I know it now, in this moment. We haven’t lived in the same place since high school. There’s so much we’ve missed along the way to becoming adults.

“So you’ve never looked him up?” Whitney says. “Not even back then?”

“Not really.” This is completely false.

“You’re going to hand over the future of the resort to him, and you haven’t so much as searched to see if his business is legit?” She looks to Cam for backup, but he shrugs one blocky shoulder. He’s a few inches taller than Whitney and has arms that belong in a firefighter calendar.

The two of them have been inseparable since we were fifteen. Cam had been a twerp in elementary school, but the summer between ninth and tenth grades was kind to him, and it was impossible not to notice Whitney noticing him when school started up in the fall. Cam had his yearslong crush right where he wanted, and I remember how he asked her to the winter formal as if it was a dare, his chin lifted in challenge. Whitney couldn’t resist a dare.

Now he’s a counselor at our old high school, and he’s such a steady, kindhearted person that I bet he’s great at his job. I know Whitney’s good at hers. She’s the most passionate dental hygienist anywhere, without question.

“I didn’t agree to anything, and I may have done a quick search years ago. But that’s it.”

I made the mistake of googling Will yesterday, but I haven’t seen him in the flesh since Sunday cocktails with the Roses. That was three days ago, and I’ve been dodging him ever since. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t just packed his things and left.

I’ve spent most of my time with Jamie, getting up to speed. I even made it into the dining room. I could feel eyes on me as soon as I entered, and I wanted to vaporize, but I did it. It’s become apparent how much Jamie has protected me from while I’ve made my way through the murky haze of grief.

Now when I’m awake in the middle of the night, I tiptoe to my bedroom window and look at the soft glow coming from Cabin 20. I’m not the only insomniac around here. I stare at that square of light through the trees and wonder if I could survive even an hour working alongside Will. Because the more I learn about the resort, the more I can’t deny we need his help.

Whitney passes the baby to Cam, who immediately starts shifting his weight from side to side, making funny faces as he sways. Ever since Owen started laughing, his parents have become obsessed with getting giggles from him. He’s a gorgeous baby, with Cam’s dark brown skin and Whitney’s wide eyes.

Whitney roots around her purse and pulls out her phone, tapping the screen.

“This him?” She holds it up to my face. It’s a headshot of Will—his hair is smoothed back and he’s wearing a jacket and tie. I’ve studied every pixel of the image already. The thick lashes, the black-brown eyes, the bow of his top lip, the strong line of his jaw, and the long one of his nose. He is ridiculously attractive.

“I’ll take it from the way your pupils swelled that it is,” Whitney says.

She points the photo at Cam, who gives it a quick glance and then does a double take, pressing his glasses almost right to the screen.

“Shit,” he says. “Nice work, Baby.”

“Cam, for the love of god, do not call me that,” I say. “And what do you mean, nice work?”

“You hooked up with him, right?”

“No,” Whitney and I reply in stereo.

Cam frowns. “Wait, you’re not sleeping with him? Why do we care about this guy again?”

“Because he made Baby fall in love with him, and then he left her brokenhearted. Keep up, Camden.”

“Oh, this is the guy you dumped Jamie for?” Cam asks.

“I didn’t dump Jamie,” I snap. I hate that these two think the breakup was my doing. The four of us hung out during the summer when Jamie and I dated, but Cam and Jamie kept in touch. They’re close friends now.

“Technically,” he says. “But you forced his hand.”

I glower at Cam as Whitney begins reading from the website.

“ ‘William Baxter is a partner at Baxter-Lee.’ Blah, blah, boring, boring. ‘He specializes in strategic branding and marketing and was named one of 2019’s “Most Exciting New Visionaries” by Canadian Business. William holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.’ ”

Whitney’s eyes pop as she scrolls. This is what I was afraid of.

“I think Will might be some kind of socialite,” she says. “There are photos of him at parties and on red carpets.”

She returns to the screen with the same determined look she had when we used to play Mystery Guest.

“Give me that,” I say, grabbing the phone. I intend to turn it off and pass it to Cam for safekeeping, but my eyes get stuck on the photo that fills the screen. I’ve seen this one, too. It’s of Will, dressed in a tux, his arm wrapped around a woman who’s wearing an emerald green gown. She’s horribly pretty. She has hair as dark as his, but hers falls in soft, hot-tool-aided waves past her shoulders. He broods at the camera; she beams at it with white-white, straight-straight teeth and the kind of plush pink lips the word pillowy was invented to describe.

“She’s in a lot of them,” Whitney says. “Jessica Rashad. One of the captions said she’s an art collector and philanthropist. Doesn’t that just mean she’s rich?” Her eyes go even bigger, brightening like fog lights. “Let’s look her up!”

“Nope. You are officially cut off,” I say, trying to act like it doesn’t bother me that Will’s ex is as hot as a Jonas Brothers wife. “It’s time for you two to hand me that baby and get out of here.”

I give the phone to Cam to be safe and extract Owen from his arms. My friends look at each other, faces screwed up with concern.

“Seriously, we’ll be fine.” I tap Owen on the nose and he gives me a gummy grin. I raise my eyebrows at Whitney, a silent I told you so. “And don’t rush back. Have a cocktail. Order dessert,” I say, though I give them an hour before they return.

They apply a smattering of kisses to Owen’s head and then, finally, say goodbye. I watch them leave from the porch, holding up the baby’s chubby arm, waving as they go.

It takes all of fifteen minutes before Owen starts to scream.

—

I have done everything. I changed Owen’s dirty diaper. Tried giving him a bottle. Bounced him on my knee. I made funny faces. I sang an electric rendition of “There’s a Hole in My Bucket.” But the kid won’t stop wailing. I’m worried he’s going to make himself sick. And I’m no longer wearing pants, having spilled milk all over both Owen and me.

“Owen, honey. Please, please, please stop crying,” I beg as I walk him around the living room on the verge of sobbing myself.

I’m not usually a crier, but after Mom died, it was like someone installed a leaky faucet behind my eyelids.

Something fundamental shifted between us when I told Mom I didn’t want to go into the family business. I felt guilty, but I also felt free. Mom couldn’t understand why I’d want to live paycheck to paycheck in Toronto when I could come home and earn a real salary. We had our weekly call every Sunday, but we often spent it arguing. By the time I became a manager at Filtr six years ago, I thought she’d resigned herself to my living in the city. We’d stopped fighting. She visited to take me to lunch and was impressed by how busy our flagship location was.

When Philippe and I started dating, I could tell she was suspicious. “He seems very pleased with himself,” she’d said. It was an apt description, but I figured he had a lot to be pleased about: a successful business, visible abdominal muscles, a fantastic condo in a converted church. She told me to be careful.

It was a Sunday when I found him with the hat designer. He and I had spent the afternoon in the office, reviewing renovation plans for our third location, and while I often stayed at his place, he said he needed Sunday evenings to himself for “restorative care.” That worked for me. I had my own routine. First groceries, then my call with Mom. I had just stepped onto the streetcar when I realized I’d forgotten my phone. To say I was surprised to replace Philippe folding someone over my desk is an understatement. I was still in shock when Mom called, and I spilled the whole story—the most I’d ever divulged to her about my love life.

She showed up at my apartment the next day with a small suitcase I didn’t know she owned and a loaf of Peter’s sourdough. She stayed three nights, the longest time we’d spent together in years outside of Christmas. She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t press me on whether I had an inkling he’d been cheating. I suspected she was working up to telling me to come home, to come work at Brookbanks. But she didn’t do that, either. We watched a lot of Netflix and ate a lot of bread. When she hugged me goodbye, I didn’t want her to go. And when I told her I was going to miss her, I felt something shift again, an easing of tension. We were closer in that moment than we had been in the one before it.

She died two years later.

It feels like I lost her just as we’d begun to replace each other. I’ve mourned my memories of Mom. The way she would sneak into my room and kiss me good night after returning from the lodge, thinking I was asleep when all the while I’d been waiting for her. The crisp fall mornings when things got a tiny bit slower and she’d wake me early to sit with her by the water while she drank her coffee. The way she introduced me as My Fern. Her pancakes. She was adamant about making them with buttermilk, though we never had any in the house. She’d mix lemon juice into milk so it soured instead. But I’ve also mourned the future we’ll never have, the relationship we were only starting to make solid.

I got so sick of crying—the stinging eyes, the stuffy nose, the feeling that I’d never be able to stop—that I tried cutting myself off a couple weeks after the funeral. I’ve slipped a few times, but now, trying to soothe an inconsolable five-month-old, I fall off the wagon. Hard.

The knock is almost imperceptible through the cacophony that is Owen. I stop shushing, and there it is again. Whitney and Cam must have cut their evening short. I’m so relieved, I don’t care if I’ve completely failed as a babysitter.

But it’s not Whitney and Cam I see when I open the door.

It’s Will.

I couldn’t say what it is about him that muddles my brain. The blue jeans and faded gray T-shirt. The sheer length of him. The fact that he’s here at all. But if I had to pick, it might be the hair. It’s shorter than it was back then, but seeing it like this, messy and unstyled, lying in a black stripe across his forehead, makes me feel like I’m twenty-two again.

“I’m here for the ritualistic infant sacrifice. Eight p.m., right?” Will says while I blink at him, Owen wiggling hotly in the crook of my arm.

I picture how we must look to Will: both puffy-eyed and tearstained. The baby is naked except for his diaper. My nose is running. I’m not wearing a bra or pants, and my gray tank top is speckled with my best friend’s breast milk.

“You heard the crying?” I ask, trying to sound as if I were, in fact, wearing pants and not in the midst of spectacularly losing my shit. I’m grateful Will keeps his eyes on my face.

“I think they can hear the crying in Alaska.”

“I’m sorry.” I raise my voice over Owen’s vocal pyrotechnics. “I’ll close the windows.”

“Actually,” Will says, “I was coming to see if I could help.”

“With the baby?” From the disbelief in my voice, I might as well have asked, With the infant sacrifice?

“Yeah. I know a thing or two.”

The smart thing to do in this situation is lie, to tell Will I’ve got things under control, then politely ask him to leave.

“So,” Will says, “can I come in?”

But the reality is that Owen has been out of his mind for at least twenty minutes, and I’m desperate. I hold the door open with my hip.

As soon as Will’s inside, I know I’ve made a mistake. He stands across from me in the hallway, and there is just so much of him so close to me. He’s brought his burnt sugar smell in with him, and when he leans down to Owen, I see the spray of freckles across the tops of his cheeks. I’ve imagined alternate endings of the day we spent together so many times, it’s shameful, but nothing has taken me back there so quickly as having Will Baxter in my home. Humiliation and desire hit me in equal measure.

Will puts his hand on my elbow.

“Why don’t you let me take . . .” He pauses.

“Owen.”

He squeezes Owen’s foot. “Why don’t you let me take Owen, and you can get dressed?” He looks up at me, and the mischief in his eyes almost makes me gasp. It’s the first glimpse I’ve had of the old Will. “Unless you two have some kind of pants-free policy going on here.”

“I spilled the milk,” I whisper. “On both of us.”

“I won’t tell,” he says. I shift Owen into his arms, and he lays him on his shoulder in one easy movement.

“The living room is to the left,” I say. There’s no way I’m leading him there. My underwear has monday written across the backside under a picture of Little Miss Grumpy. Plus, it’s Wednesday.

Upstairs, I splash cold water on my face, thankful I’m not wearing makeup and that my cheeks don’t have mascara tracks on them. I run a brush through my hair, swipe on deodorant, and throw on a bra, a clean tank top, and a pair of denim shorts. I give myself a once-over in the mirror.

When I come downstairs, Owen’s cradled in Will’s arms, looking up at him quietly while Will sings. I watch from the landing. Owen is now dressed in a turquoise sleeper, and Will, I realize, is serenading him with “Closing Time,” the song that ended every single elementary school dance I attended. When he’s done, he lifts the baby to his face, and Owen, the little menace, laughs.

“The undeniable power of Semisonic—works on grade-seven girls and babies,” I say, moving closer, and Will turns around. He takes me in, clocking my outfit.

“What?”

Will shakes his head. “I kissed Catherine Reyes dancing to this song.”

I laugh despite myself. “I kissed Justin Tremblay.” I give Owen a rub on his head. “How did you tame this dragon? Nothing I did worked.” I glance up at Will, and there’s so much warmth in his eyes, I take a step back. And then it dawns on me. “Oh. Do you have one?”

“A kid? No.” He sounds startled.

“You don’t want them?”

“No.” He pauses. “I don’t know. What about you?”

“I’ve got five,” I deadpan. “Owen’s the youngest.”

I’m rewarded with a miniature smile for that. Will peers down at the baby. “I saw you waving goodbye to a couple who I’m guessing are his parents.”

“My best friend, Whitney, and her husband.” I scan Will’s face for a sign that he recalls the name, but I get nothing. “It’s the first time I’ve babysat. Clearly.”

Owen lets out a well-timed squawk and shoves a fist into his mouth.

“Did you manage to feed him?” Will asks, twisting his upper body around to soothe Owen. “I think he’s hungry.”

“I tried, but he didn’t stop crying. I couldn’t really get him to drink. We can give it another go.”

I warm up the milk in the kitchen, and when I return, Will and Owen are snuggled in the armchair, a cloth bib around Owen’s neck. I hadn’t thought of a bib earlier. Will reaches for the bottle.

“I can do it,” he says. “Unless you want to.”

“Be my guest.” I fold myself onto the sofa.

“Hungry guy,” Will says as Owen begins glugging away happily.

I watch, astonished. Will looks up at me, and there’s no way he doesn’t see my shock, but he offers no explanation for his expert baby handling.

Owen starts to squirm and Will sits him up, patting him gently on the back until he makes an outrageously loud Homer Simpson burp, then slumps in Will’s hands.

When the bottle is drained, Will burps the baby again, wipes his chin, and takes him to the travel crib in the corner of the room, setting him down gently. Owen doesn’t make a peep.

“Is there another room we can sit in?” Will whispers, surprising me. I assumed he’d leave. “Unless you’d prefer for me to go?”

“Stay,” I tell him. “If he wakes, I’ll need backup.”

—

I lead Will into the kitchen. The shoeboxes of Mom’s diaries are still on the table, exactly where they have sat, unopened, since Peter gave them to me. I take a bottle of white wine out of the fridge, holding it up to him in question. He nods and taps a finger against Whitney’s babysitting FAQs, which lie on the counter.

“What’s this?”

“Proof my friend doesn’t trust me with her infant son?” I pour the wine. “No idea why she’d feel that way.”

Will reads from the sheet of paper. “Owen’s favorite lullabies are ‘Edelweiss’ and ‘What a Wonderful World.’ ” He glances at me. “Advanced.”

“I’m convinced the doctors gave Whitney a personality transplant when the baby came out of her.”

He studies the page, the lines on his forehead deepening. “Parenthood can really fuck with you.” It’s a forceful statement coming from someone who’s reportedly not a parent.

“This is nice,” he says as we pass through the sunroom that Mom used as her office. I don’t like coming in here, but there’s no way to get to the back without going through it. “It’s so modern,” he says as I slide open the glass door to the deck.

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “This part was rebuilt.”

Will’s gaze replaces mine, and I can see him connecting dots. I don’t want to think about that night, or all the extra shifts I took so I could help cover the repair costs.

Recognition ripples in Will’s eyes, but all he says is, “Oh.” I tilt my head, gesturing for him to step outside.

The deck faces the bush so there’s no lake view, but I’ve always liked how private it feels, how you can’t see any of the guest cabins. I leave the door open so we can hear Owen and settle into one of the chairs.

“You really seem to know your way around a diaper bag,” I say. “You sure you don’t have a baby at home?”

Will freezes, holding his glass halfway to his mouth. He stares into his wine, and then slowly sets his glass down.

“I have a niece. My sister has a daughter,” he says after a second. His voice is clipped, like it costs him something to share this information.

“Did she have her recently?”

“No.”

Will drops his gaze to his wine, his jaw tight. I can almost see the wall he’s erected.

I want to shake him. I want to yell, Who are you and what have you done with my Will? I want to sharpen my claws and tear every brick from that wall. “Care to elaborate?”

Will takes a drink, then meets my eyes. “My sister was young when she became a mom. I helped out.”

“Proud uncle?”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t know how my mom did it all by herself.” It’s an afterthought, one I didn’t really intend to vocalize.

“Single moms are superhuman,” Will says. “Yours seemed like a very determined woman.”

“She was a force,” I say.

We fall quiet. Will sits back in his chair, legs stretched in front of him, gazing at the trees.

“It’s nice here,” he says. “This whole place is gorgeous, but it’s peaceful back here.”

“Yeah, I used to come out here a lot when I was growing up,” I say. “And go down to the family dock.”

“To hide from all the guests?”

“Something like that,” I say, looking into the bush.

“You must be considering selling,” he says.

“Must I?”

“You weren’t interested in running a resort—I assume selling is on the table.”

I pull a gust of air into my lungs and let it out slowly. “It’s on the table.”

“It’s not an easy decision to make.”

“No, it’s not,” I agree. “It feels impossible.”

He watches me closely. “Does Jamie have something to do with that?”

I’m not touching that one right now. “I guess there’s not much point in having a consultant if I’m going to off-load the place, is there?” I say.

Will slants his head. “How serious are you about listing it?”

I take a drink. “The million-dollar question.”

“I don’t mean to pressure you.”

“Minus the fact that you need to know whether I want to work with you.”

“True.” He crosses one ankle over the other. “But I’m not asking as your potential consultant, I’m asking as your . . .” He drifts off.

I raise my eyebrows, waiting to see how he could possibly end that sentence. There’s no label that describes what he is to me.

“I’m just asking,” he finishes. But then he pins me with a hard stare. “And I guess I’m surprised that it’s even a question. That you wouldn’t just sell.”

“Because of the plan?” I say, voice hoarse. It’s been years since I looked at the list Will and I made. If I shut my eyes, I can still picture his handwriting. fern’s one-year plan. I have the four items on it memorized.

“Because you didn’t want to end up here.”

My fingers wriggle with the urge to scratch. “For a long time, my plan has been to open a coffee shop in the city.”

“One without a mural of Toronto on its wall, I imagine.” Will’s lips twitch. “Too basic for you.”

My insides fizz with pleasure. “I might let you paint a fern on the wall,” I say. “A small one.”

“That’s the only way I do them,” he says. “I’m very fond of small ferns.”

I go still, though beneath my skin I’m fully carbonated. That f sounded capitalized. We look at each other for a full minute. Or maybe it’s five seconds. However long, it’s dangerous.

“Do you still do murals? For fun, I mean.”

“No,” Will says quietly. He gazes into the darkness. “I haven’t picked up a brush in a very long time.”

“What about a pencil?”

He shakes his head.

“You should,” I tell him. “It’s wasteful not to use talent like yours.”

His eyes snap to mine and hang on tight. “Careful,” he says. “That sounded like a compliment.”

“It wasn’t—I was pointing out how you’re squandering a gift.”

He makes a humming noise, low in his throat. It feels like having my back scratched.

“Anyway,” I say, bringing us back to our original topic. “Brookbanks was my mom’s entire life—it’s not easy to say goodbye to that. I have no idea what to do.”

Will sets his glass down, still watching me, and twists his ring. I stare at his hands, falling through time. I can almost feel his pinkie wrapped in mine. “If you really don’t know, I could work on two scenarios. One for selling, another if you decide to run this place yourself.”

“That sounds like a lot more work.”

“Looking at both options might help you make a decision.”

I move my head from side to side.

“You’re not sure you want to work with me, are you?” he asks. “I’m good at what I do, but that’s not the issue, is it?”

His question tugs at something inside me that I don’t want to explore.

I can’t hold on to my hurt so tightly that I’m unable to do what’s best for the resort. I’m a good manager, but I’ve never overhauled a business. I might be able to figure it out with time, but Brookbanks needs help yesterday. “Actually,” I tell Will, “I’ve been thinking I’d like to accept your help.”

The smile that takes over Will’s face could guide a ship home. He looks a decade younger. He looks like the Will I remember.

“Are we interrupting?” Whitney sticks her head out the back door.

“Hey!” I jump out of my seat. “You’re back. How was it?”

“Great,” she says, eyes trained on Will, who’s getting to his feet. “But enough about that.” She flicks her wrist.

Whitney is highly excitable, and when she’s ready to play, her big eyes go even wider and her lips smack together as if she’s struggling to contain herself. I call it her Evil Villain Face. And right now, she is wearing her Evil Villain Face.

“I see you’ve broken your man hiatus,” she says.

I glance at Will, whose eyebrows are a good inch higher from where he last left them.

“There’s a hiatus?”

Before I can confirm, deny, or implode from mortification, Cam steps onto the deck.

“Owen’s fast asleep,” he says, but no one pays him any attention because Whitney is sticking her hand out, saying, “You must be Will. It’s so nice to meet you.”

He clasps her palm, clearly taken aback.

“We googled you earlier,” Whitney says. Traitor.

Will’s eyes flare at this, and he shoots me a smug look, another flash of the younger Will.

“Just to check your credentials,” Cam says, offering his hand. I’ll thank him later. “I’m Camden, and this troublemaker is my wife, Whitney.”

“Nice to meet you both,” Will says. “I also met Owen earlier. He’s a beautiful baby.”

“We didn’t realize Fern was having a boy over this evening,” Whitney says. “Not sure we left enough pizza money to feed two people.” She’s making a joke, but the underlying question is obvious: What exactly are you doing here, Will Baxter?

I’m about to explain how Will helped with Owen, but he speaks first. “I saw Fern and Owen waving goodbye earlier, and I stopped in to meet the baby. We got to talking and . . .” Will gestures to the wine and the porch. “It’s such a nice evening.”

“Do you two want a glass?” I ask.

Whitney glances between us, a look of pure agony on her face. I know the calculation she’s trying to make: Stay and get a read on Will, or leave and let us continue whatever it is they interrupted. An excruciating choice.

“We’d love to, but we should get Owen home,” she says. Her words are so saturated with disappointment, it’s comical.

Will stays in the back while I see them off, Whitney carrying the sleeping baby in her arms and Cam lugging the diaper bag and travel crib.

“Whitney seems fun,” Will says when I return to the deck.

“She’s a maniac.”

“I should head out, too,” he says. I almost tell him to stay, to have another drink. “Thank you for the wine,” Will says.

“I owe you an entire bottle for helping me out tonight. I’m not sure what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up.”

“Any time.” He pauses and his eyes zip around my face like a searchlight. “You were serious earlier, right? About us working together?”

“I was.” Though the idea of spending more time with Will makes me feel light-headed. “I have a real estate agent coming next week. Could you come to the meeting?”

“I can do that,” he says. “But can you and I meet before then? There’s a lot I’d like to go over. Tomorrow would be great, if you’re able?”

We agree to meet here in the afternoon, and I lead Will to the front door, holding it open.

“Good night, Fern,” he says. “I hope you sleep well.”

—

After Will leaves, I stand at the kitchen table in front of the stack of shoeboxes. I think about Will and the past, and how different things look after so much time, and I carry the boxes to my room. The bedsprings squeak when I set them down.

There are more than a dozen journals, starting from when my mom was eight until just before I was born. I read them all during the summer I was seventeen. But I never finished the last one. I got up to the point where Mom found out she was pregnant before I confronted her.

I stop breathing when I replace it, its fabric cover patterned with cheerful sunflowers, its pages only half-full. My mother’s handwriting is so familiar, slanting to the right with elongated y’s, j’s, g’s, and f’s. The first entry is dated May 6, 1990. Mom would have been twenty-two—it was right after she graduated from the University of Ottawa.

One hundred and twenty-seven sleeps until Europe! she wrote at the top. A lot of the entries begin this way, with a countdown to her big trip.

Peter brought me a calendar today and said I need to start crossing off the days until I leave. I’ve only been home for a week, but I think he’s sick of hearing me talk about traveling so much. So now I go into the pastry kitchen every morning and x off the date.

Have I mentioned that the music Peter’s playing is even more depressing than the mixtape he mailed me last winter? His poor staff! Tomorrow I’m going to sneak an Anne Murray cassette into the stereo when he’s not looking.

I smile to myself—Peter still has that old tape deck. I flip through the pages, looking for his name. He’s in here a lot.

Tonight, after I get ready for bed, I curl up with the diary, laughing out loud at Mom’s description of the Roses and my grandparents.

It’s the last day of the long weekend, and it’s finally starting to feel like summer. Lots of the regulars got here yesterday. The Roses brought an entire case of gin. Almost all the seasonal workers have started (the new lifeguard is the cutest by far), and the staff cabins are full. There’ll be fireworks off the docks tonight. I’ll have to watch Dad. Last Victoria Day he had one too many of Mr. Rose’s martinis and almost lost his nose lighting a Roman Candle.

Mom writes about how badly she wanted to get involved in the business in a “meaningful way.” She references Peter visiting her at school in Ottawa for her birthday a few times. Nothing happened between them, but it’s plain to me now that deeper feelings were at play.

As my eyes grow heavy, I put the diary down and shut off the light. My mind drifts to Will, replaying our evening together, fixing on the smile that transformed his face when I told him I wanted to work together.

For the second time in my life, Will Baxter is going to help me make a plan.