Chapter 7: The Dock

The lake house sat at the end of a gravel road on the east shore of Lake Ansel, behind a stand of tulip poplars.

I hadn't been inside it in six days.

Greer parked her truck in the yard and sat with her hands on the wheel.

"It's smaller than I thought," she said.

"It's the same size."

"I thought we'd had more of a porch."

"You had that railing taken off when he learned to climb it."

She turned her head and stared at me.

Then she got out.

The meadow ran down in front of us toward the water, tall and pale with last year's grass.

It was nine in the morning, bright, and no insects were up yet.

I had expected the field to be harder to look at.

Greer walked straight down the slope.

She held the yellow flashlight in her right hand, still switched on, and she kept it a little in front of her.

I followed with the cast across my chest.

The dock ran out about forty feet from the shore, gray boards on black posts.

She stopped at the end of the grass.

"This is where."

"Further out. At the far post, past the ladder."

She looked at the boards.

"Go ahead," I said. "It's only wood."

She stepped onto it.

It took her three steps to find the soft one.

The plank gave with a crack, and her foot went through to the knee.

I was already moving.

I grabbed her wrist with my left hand, the good one, and hauled.

She came up out of the hole with her shin scraped and the flashlight still in her fist.

We stood on the dock with her wrist locked in my fingers, her face a foot from mine.

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