Chapter 10: Drunk at the Door

At seven that evening I stood at Discovery Point in my mother's silver watch and a clean sweater, waiting for the sunset.

A crowd had come up from the lodge to see it.

Couples leaned on the stone wall and held out their phones.

A small girl in a pink hat sat on her father's shoulders.

Eli stood two feet from me with his hands in his jacket pockets, and he had not touched me since morning.

I had not stopped thinking about it.

Every time he looked at the water, I looked at his mouth.

"Seven twenty-two," he said, checking his watch. "Nineteen minutes."

"You made me wear a sweater."

"It drops twenty degrees when the sun goes."

"You've said that six times."

"It's still true."

Then the clouds came.

They rolled in off the west rim in one gray sheet, thick as wool, and swallowed the water.

The light went flat.

Somebody groaned.

"Well," Eli said. "That's it."

"It's cloud."

"It's the lake. She's not always in the mood."

"I waited four years."

"I know."

He said it so gently that I turned to look at him.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Or the day after. She'll come out when she's ready. I'm not going anywhere."

I opened my mouth to answer.

A voice behind us shouted my name.

"JUNE!"

Everyone turned around.

Brett stood at the head of the path, swaying, in the same navy suit with the jacket gone and the tie hanging loose.

He had a bottle in one hand.

His eyes were red, and his hair stood up in tufts.

Behind him, a rental car sat crooked across two parking spaces with its door open.

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