Chapter 10: Green Lake

On Thursday I sat in the clinic parking lot for the first time in more than a year.

I watched Lena cross the asphalt in her gray coat and push through the glass doors without looking back.

Women went in and came out, some alone and some with a husband holding a coat.

I thought of Dale in a different lot, with the radio on.

She came out at noon with a cotton ball taped inside her elbow and got into the passenger seat.

"Drive," she said. "The cabin."

The cabin at Green Lake sits at the end of a gravel road, with a dock that runs out over dark water gone gray for winter.

Lena's father keeps the key hidden in a coffee can, and he had given me the second one.

She walked straight down to the dock without going inside.

I followed her out, and the boards were slick with frost.

She stopped at the end and put both hands in her pockets.

"Say why," she said.

I had rehearsed it for three days, in the shower and the car and the dark on the couch.

None of the versions was there.

"I can't be the father of anyone's baby," I said. "Not Kendall's. Not anyone's."

Lena didn't move.

"Two years ago in March, I had a vasectomy."

The wind came off the lake and neither of us said anything.

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