Deep Betrayal

Ultimately, Calder promised to try.
    Unlike Dad, Mom was pleasantly surprised to hear about our meet-up with Calder. I thought she’d have more questions. I mean, it was all a little too serendipitous, wasn’t it? But Calder worked his charms on her better than he’d managed with Dad. No surprise that she was only too happy to have him ride with us up to Bayfield.
    The only bad part about the trip was that the backseat was cramped with Sophie, Calder, and me squeezed together, and Dad had his rearview mirror focused on Calder, rather than the road.
    Calder’s decision to come back with us had triggered a lovely father-daughter chat the night before. “We’ve got to set some ground rules,” Dad had said.
    I hadn’t really cared too much what they were. For me, I was glad to obey as long as I wasn’t in exile anymore, and rules had never mattered much to Calder. I’d leave any rule breaking up to him.
    A couple of hours out of the Twin Cities, towns made way for pine trees and the air temperature dropped. Calder rolled his window down all the way, and my hair whipped around my face until I was able to find an elastic band tucked under the floor mat. I looped my hair into a messy bun, exposing my neck. Calder’s fingers were quick to find it, and hisfingers worked out the tension knots in my neck and shoulders. I caught my dad watching in the mirror.
    To my left, Sophie scribbled on a crossword puzzle balanced on her knees; she sang aloud to whatever she was listening to on her MP3 player, off-key and perfect all at the same time. Some eighties hair band belted out a ballad from the front-seat speakers. Dad held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled death grip. Mom buried her nose in a book.
    I reached down to the floor to pull MY SCRIBBLINGS from my backpack. As I did, my new beach-glass pendant fell to the outside of my shirt.
    Calder lifted the pendant gently in his fingers. “Where’d you get this?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you wear it before.”
    “It was a graduation present from my parents.”
    His brow furrowed, and he turned the pendant over a few times before letting it fall against my chest. I could feel the heat of his fingers, absorbed in the glass, warming my skin.
    Calder turned back to the window, throwing his left arm around my shoulders. Dad’s eyes were in the mirror again, but I didn’t care. I snuggled against Calder’s chest. The whole car was perfumed with patchouli.
    Trees and convenience stores flew by the window in an amazing blur of shape and color, and in a few hours, the lake appeared like blue chips of paint through the dense tree line. Five minutes later, the trees fell apart, the road cut to the edge of the bank, and the wide expanse of blue welcomed us home. My voice rose above the car radio, “We’re here!”
    Sophie yanked the earbuds from her ears and looked outCalder’s window. Dad and Calder kept their eyes straight ahead, but I guess they could smell the lake long before I saw it. We all inhaled, holding our collective breath before simultaneously exhaling. Something about the smell tugged at my heart, which beat madly beneath my pendant.
    Pulling through town, past the bookstore, Big Mo’s Pizzeria, the IGA, and the Blue Moon Café, I felt a twinge of guilt at having left Mrs. Boyd in the lurch. I supposed by now she’d hired our replacement baristas. I slunk low in my seat in case she saw me as we passed.
    Mom turned around and said, “Leaving a job is not a capital offense, Lily. My goodness, how did I raise a child with such an inflated sense of guilt? Quit worrying. We gave Mrs. Boyd your notice.”
    “She probably hates me,” I moped.
    “Oh, for crying out loud, she’s not mad at you.”
    Calder looked quizzically at me and then at the café storefront. By the look on his face, it had never occurred to him we’d been irresponsible. He was probably used to taking off without notice. Clearly, he hadn’t given Mrs. Boyd a second thought.
    We pulled north out of town, finding the driveway more easily than the day we first moved in. This time when we unpacked it wasn’t such an ordeal. Dad helped Mom into the house, and Calder grabbed my parents’ and Sophie’s suitcases at once.
    I had somewhat more than the others, having moved most of my things back to Minneapolis. I carried my biggest suitcase up the porch steps, thankful for their welcoming lean under my feet. Seagulls squawked overhead, saying they remembered me. Or at least, that was