The estate agent wants the lake house cleared by the end of the month, and my mother wants it done by the two people who can least bear to be in it together. I am Finja, twenty-seven, a graphic designer who works from a laptop and could have done this from anywhere, and I have driven four hours to stand on a jetty I last stood on at twenty-two.
Jannik's car is already in the drive.
Five years since we spoke. Not a fight; worse than a fight. The summer our parents married we simply stopped, as if by agreement, and every family occasion since has been a demonstration of how well two people can share a room without sharing a word.
He comes out of the boathouse with sawdust on his forearms. Twenty-nine now. Taller, or I've forgotten. He stops when he sees me and wipes his hands on his jeans, and the sound of the lake fills the whole gap where hello should be.
“You're early,” he says.
“You're earlier.”
“I've been here a week.” He gestures behind him, and through the boathouse door I can see the rowing boat, the one that sank the August we were both here, hull up on trestles, planks new and pale where the rot was. He has been repairing it. He has been repairing it before I arrived, alone, in the heat, for a week, and I don't know what to do with the information.
The air is thick. The cicadas are loud. We stand ten paces apart on the gravel with five years and one boat between us, and Jannik looks at the jetty, then at me, and says, in the voice I remember from before everything, “I thought we could take it out. When it's done.” He doesn't say we. He doesn't need to. He waits, and the lake waits, and I have two weeks to decide whether I get in.
