Chapter 23: Lights On, Dock

At six that evening I asked Cal to walk out to the dock with me.

"Now?" he said. "It's freezing."

"Now."

He frowned at my face and got his jacket.

The sun had gone behind the pines, and the lake was dark and still.

I had my hand in my pocket, around a small box.

It had been in that pocket since Friday.

Halfway down the boards, I stopped.

"Look up," I said.

He looked.

Someone had strung lights along the whole length of the dock while we were not looking.

They hung from the posts in long warm loops, hundreds of them, all the way to the end.

My mother stood at the shore with a plug in her hand and a face that said she was not at all nervous.

Behind her, on the road, the neighbor with the fern held a flashlight.

Beyond him were other people, standing along the fence in coats, with their breath showing.

Half of Pine Lake had come to watch, and none of them were pretending to look at the lake.

"Clarissa," Cal said. "What did you do?"

"I turned the lights on."

"I see that."

"You never liked the lights on. I thought we'd start with a lot of them."

He laughed, a little helplessly.

I walked to the end of the dock, where the planks widened, and I turned around.

"I kissed you right here when I was twenty-one," I said. "And you left."

"I remember."

"You came back, and you stayed, and you wrote me five years of notes."

"You tore up an Alaska letter in my kitchen sink."

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