Grady Lake, page 2
part #1 of Grady Lake Mystery Series Series
Packing my things wasn’t an emotional process; I’d done it before with exes and never shed a tear. The landlord was incredibly understanding when I called her. Turns out that was because Dave already informed her that I’d be moving out and Jackie from the bagel shop would be added to the lease, effective immediately. In true Katie Benard fashion, my only moment of regret was turning in my notice at work. I can’t stand the thought of letting anyone down. My career has been my entire identity for the decade since college graduation. But the truth is, I’m tired. I’ve begun to wonder if climbing the corporate ladder is really what’s meant for me. When I closed my eyes and tried my best to imagine the place I’d be happiest, on the shores of Grady Lake was the only answer.
I’m not foolish enough to think it can ever be perfect again, especially without Malorie and Mom, but Grady is the only place that has ever felt like home, and my soul craves it. No rush-hour traffic, no trendy overpriced restaurants, no cheating men to break my heart. Just a quaint little town on the lake, where I know everyone except the handful of seasonal tourists who aren’t yet regulars.
I’ve been on the road in my packed-to-the-limit Highlander for a little over two hours when my phone rings. I smile before pushing the Bluetooth button, enabling Nicole’s voice to fill the car.
“Heard you got dumped, you little bitch.”
God, I’ve missed her.
“I got cheated on. I dumped him. There’s a difference,” I respond.
“Yeah, yeah. Are you really coming home or is Lou fucking with me?”
“I’m coming home. On my way now. Sorry I didn’t call . . . it’s been a weird couple of weeks living with the jerk while I got everything ready to move.”
I know her so well; I swear I can hear her smiling before she speaks.
“Want me to light him on fire?”
I let out a quick laugh. “Maybe.”
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re coming. We’ve got one week to get our Labor Day float ready for the boat parade. I haven’t won since you left town and I’m fucking sick of losing. Father Ryan was even at the Grab N Go yesterday talking shit about it.”
Our senior year, we made a 007-themed float and Nicole appealed to the perverted tendencies of the lead judge, Mr. Mayscott, by wearing a blonde wig and a thin white t-shirt that said “Pussy Galore” on the front, while also forcing me into six-inch heels and an entirely-too-short sequined miniskirt. My cousin, Dougie, inexplicably dressed as Austin Powers, manned the boat. We blared “Secret Agent Man” from the speakers as we made our lap around the lake, repeatedly bending down to refill our empty Coke cans with UV Vodka until the bottle was empty. We hoisted our first-place trophy in the air during our victory lap, and the elderly women of the Grady Lake Knitting Club have held a grudge ever since. Covering every inch of their 1991 Suncruiser Pontoon with yarn scraps must have been time consuming, but it wasn’t enough to sway the judges’ attention from two scantily clad eighteen-year-olds and the antics of my dipshit cousin, Dougie.
“What’s our theme?” I ask.
“You’re the brains of this operation; just get your ass up here.”
I shake my head. When Nicole is involved, I’m always the brains of the operation.
“I’ll be in late tonight. I’ll hit you up tomorrow. I’ve gotta go, I’m pulling onto the bridge.”
The Mackinac Bridge, which separates the Lower Peninsula of Michigan from the Upper Peninsula, is five miles of pure terror, suspended high over the lake. Each trip I take, I grip my steering wheel with white knuckles like it’s my first time to ever cross. In 1989, a sweet waitress driving an ’87 Yugo blew off the bridge and fell to her death, and it’s the cautionary tale we all recall the minute our tires hit the grates. If it happened to her, it could happen to us.
Luckily, there’s not much wind today, so I shift my focus from impending doom to the beauty of the Straits of Mackinac below me, which connect the two Great Lakes of Huron and Michigan. I made a few friends in college who grew up in landlocked states and swore the Great Lakes were as big as the ocean. They’d never seen anything like the beauty of the vast, blue, and sometimes dangerous bodies of freshwater. It always made me feel like I took my childhood for granted. This state really is a sight to be seen.
I reach over to dig into my purse as I approach the north end of the bridge, where the toll booths stand. As I pull up to the window, a nice older woman greets me with a strong accent, the same one that I somehow seem to have lost over the years.
“Hi, there! How are ya? That’ll be four dollars.”
I nearly drop the change from my hand.
“Four dollars? When did that go up?”
She laughs. “Oh, years now, my dear. If yer short, I can just give ya an envelope, and you can mail us a check when ya get home.”
“No, no. I’ve got the money. I just can’t believe it. I swear it was less than two dollars when I was in college, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention the last few times because my boyfriend was driving. Well, ex-boyfriend.”
“You should see the price of milk,” she says with a wink as she takes the ones from my hand. “Enjoy your time in God’s country.”
I exhale as I pull away from the booth, not knowing when I’ll be going back, or when I’ll be able to even afford to leave Grady once I arrive. I was getting dangerously close to making six-figures at my job, and I’m giving it up to bus tables and make beds at my family’s inn, where I’ll be lucky to make minimum wage during the winter. I’m going to have to bust my ass for the next month to stockpile money from the tourists before they disappear for the off-season. Sure, we get our fair share of snowmobilers, but that won’t be until there’re enough inches on the ground to accommodate them, and they definitely don’t tip like the summer tourists.
Benard’s Lakeside Inn features an award-winning (Northern Michigan’s Best Friday Night Fish Fry, twenty years and counting) restaurant, flanked by five cabins on each side and several slips for boat and Jet Ski parking at the waterfront. Behind the restaurant is the lodge, which features a rustic lobby for guests to check in to their cabins, a small laundry room, and an oak staircase, which leads up to the private residences. The Benard residences. Now it’s just my three aunts, Cousin Dougie, and a few empty rooms; but at one time it was filled with laughter, lively conversation, and the sounds of a family life well lived. I lived with my extended family there from the time I was two years old until I left for college at eighteen. Before I moved into the dorms at Michigan State, that old lodge was the only home I’d ever known. A picture of my great-grandparents, who founded Benard’s in 1913, hangs next to the front door of the lodge, and it’s tradition to kiss our fingers and tap the frame for good luck on our way out each morning. The irony is not lost on me that we still do this, despite the fact that half the family is now dead or missing. Our good luck ritual doesn’t seem to be doing much good at all.
CHAPTER THREE
I stop at Grady Grab N Go to see Nicole as I pull into town. She’s been working at her dad’s bait shop/convenience store since we were in high school. He is getting close to retirement so, more often than not, she’s running the place while he is holed up inside his tiny cabin a few miles down the road from the shop. Nicole and I call it the “Hidey Hole” because it’s tucked in the middle of the pines on five acres, and the man still has not procured internet service, and all major cell carriers drop signal before you make it up the driveway. If you want to get ahold of Richard Lowery, landline is your only option. Several developers have offered entirely too much money for his extra acreage over the years, and he hasn’t considered them for a second. That shitty little cabin is his refuge. Nicole, not one to be sentimental, says once he dies, she’ll have it sold before his body is even in the ground.
“Well, if it isn’t Grady Lake’s prodigal daughter returning home.”
I slam my car door and spin to see Nicole’s Grandma Mae sitting in the same spot she’s been planted for years—the faded white rocking chair next to the store’s entrance, tilted at the perfect angle to see both the lake and the Grab N Go parking lot so she doesn’t miss a moment of action in either location.
“I’m no biblical expert, but didn’t the prodigal son piss away his inheritance and then return home to beg for his dad’s forgiveness?” I ask.
Mae considers this for a moment before her lips curl into a wry smile.
“Maybe that was a bad example because we know your good-for-nothing father never gave you a damn thing, and you sure won’t be asking for his forgiveness. Not on my watch.”
“Hah!” I take a few steps before bending down and pulling her into an embrace. She smells like cinnamon rolls and cherry Swisher Sweets, just like I remember. “So glad to be home, where everyone knows Charles David is an asshole.”
“Anyone who has met the man for five minutes knows he’s an asshole, Katie Bug.”
I’ve somehow still got a soft spot for my dad, who lives roughly an hour away from Grady in a town called Marquette. He and my mom divorced shortly after I was born. She immediately petitioned to change mine and Malorie’s surnames back to Benard, as well as her own. She reportedly didn’t get an argument out of him. Although he’s a drunk and a braggard, he’s all I’ve got left of my immediate family, so I do my best to keep the peace. I usually see him once a year around Christmas when he comes downstate to visit. Each trip begins and ends the same—with an argument about his drinking and a desperate plea for him not to drive. I lose that battle every year, which is probably why I don’t press him to visit more often.
“I warned your dear mother never to trust a man with two first names,” Mae grumbles.
“So you’ve told me,” I reply with a smile. She’s been saying those words to me since I was ten years old. “Where’s that useless granddaughter of yours?”
This gets a roaring laugh from Mae. Nothing tickles her more than when I verbally harass Nicole. On cue, the bell above the front door rings and Nicole sticks her head out.
“Mae-Mae, I told you not to talk to strangers.”
I take a running start at Nicole, but she steps out of the doorway and catches me, swinging me down into a headlock, her signature move.
“I can’t stand you,” I tell her.
“Yeah, I can’t stand you either,” she replies, before releasing her grip and immediately pulling me into a hug.
“You two have been acting like this your entire lives. You’re grown adults now and you need to start acting like it,” Mae says, but she’s still got that smile, which tells me she secretly hopes we never grow up.
“You just missed Lou. She came to get a pack of cigs and said the aunts are stressing her out. She let them know you were coming about an hour ago,” Nicole tells me.
“They’ll get over it,” I say. Mae coughs and gives Nicole a knowing look. “What? What does that mean?” I ask.
“So, Aunt Deb came by to get a few bags of ice because one of the bar coolers took a shit. She said to tell you when you got in that you’re on dock duty for a week. She knew you’d stop here first.”
“Shit.”
Dock duty isn’t so bad in the spring when we’re all desperate for time in the sun after a long and miserable winter, but working the dock at the end of the summer is pure misery. It only gets to be in the mid-eighties temperature wise, but sitting out in that sun all day will make you swear it’s one hundred degrees. An eight-hour shift is filled with manning the gas pumps for boaters, handling the boat and Jet Ski rentals, cleaning up whatever mess they left in the rented boats, and picking up the trash left behind on the swimming beach. Most of our guests are respectful, but even moms with the best intentions tend to leave a trail of chaos after being out in the heat all day with toddlers. In short, dock duty is a punishment in August and usually reserved for the newest hire. I’m being punished for not telling Brenda and Deb I was coming back home.
“I’ll deal with the aunts,” I say before retreating to my car.
“Good luck,” Nicole and Mae say in unison, shaking their heads.
A quarter of a mile later—this measurement has been memorized since I started working at the family business, where I directed out-of-town customers to the Grab N Go on an hourly basis—I pull in behind the lodge and strategically grab my two heaviest bags from the back of the SUV. Maybe if I’m struggling, the aunts will take mercy on me. I’m sure to add a few grunts as I enter through the back door in case they are within earshot. I gasp when the door closes behind me. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be there, but Brenda and Deb are sitting side-by-side on the back stairwell, which leads up to our living quarters. Who knows how long they’ve been staring at this back door, waiting for me to walk in.
“Well, well, well,” says Brenda.
“How nice of you to let us know you were moving home. That you and Dave broke up. That you quit your job,” Deb adds.
“Guys, can you not cut me a break just this once? It was hard enough to tell Lou. I didn’t want to have to tell the story again. She’s just who happened to answer the phone when I called.”
Brenda’s stern face softens slightly until Deb responds, “Nice try, kid. You called Lou’s cell phone directly.”
Damn it.
“Okay, you caught me. But you need to remember that I love you both very much.”
I drop both bags at my side and climb a few stairs up, leaning forward to pull them both into an embrace. “I’m your favorite niece, you can’t stay mad at me.”
“You’re our only niece,” Deb whispers. “I guess we will forgive you.”
The only thing worse than dealing with an angry Deb and Brenda is dealing with them when they are emotional. It’s unbearable. They are the two most sentimental women on the planet. My mother, who ate red meat for every meal, smoked a pack a day, and never went to the doctor, tragically died of a heart attack the year after Malorie disappeared. The aunts will tell anyone who will listen that their sister died of a broken heart, as if that was an actual medical condition. Whenever there is a beautiful sunset, they both tearfully remind everyone that red was Malorie’s favorite color. I shared a room with her and am not sure she even had a favorite color. When Michael Jackson died, they watched funeral footage for days and sobbed uncontrollably in their rooms. That’s the only vacation I can remember Lou taking—she came down and spent a week in Detroit, casino gambling and watching the Tigers, simply to get away from Deb and Brenda and their inexplicable grief over a pop star they’d never met.
Lou is the outcast of the siblings. She’s gruff, sarcastic, unemotional, and could probably run the entire restaurant by herself on a Friday night. She’s a badass. Someone recently unearthed a clip of her telling Diane Sawyer to piss off when she came to town during the search for Mal in 2003, hoping for an interview. The unaired clip was the top trending sound on TikTok for weeks when an anonymous user uploaded it this year. One of the Kardashians even used the sound over a video about paparazzi. I tried to explain it to Lou, who responded that she doesn’t give a damn about any sort of Tic Tac, but if anyone needed a statement, she wanted them to know that Diane Sawyer can still piss off.
“Will you two shut up and let the girl breathe?”
Lou comes around the corner from the front desk and peeks her head into the back entrance to the stairwell. “Hey kid, we’ve missed you.”
I jog down the steps and into her arms. Hugging Lou feels like home. It’s not a warm embrace or an extended hug; she just awkwardly pats me on the back and mumbles something like “yeah, yeah” before backing away. My mom used to tell me that Lou was the only Benard that wasn’t breastfed, and it showed.
“These two miserable broads are trying to put you on dock duty, but I’ve got a new hire starting tomorrow. If you show him the ropes for a day or two, you can come inside and serve the lunch shift for the rest of the week,” Lou tells me. I look at the other aunts and they simply roll their eyes. Lou is a hard-ass to everyone in this world except for me. You may think it’s because I’ve lost Mom and Mal, but that woman has favored me since the day I was born. She says we are kindred souls, whatever that means.
“I’d be happy to train the new hire, Lou. Thank you.”
Although I don’t love the dock, training some teenage kid to pump gas and handle the tourists sounds like a walk in the park compared to what I’d been dealing with at the PR agency the past few years. A break from the stress is just what I’m craving.
“It would be nice of you to show that same patience and understanding with my Douglas. He’s worked his entire life in that restaurant, and you won’t let him manage a single shift on his own,” Brenda says, standing up and dusting her pants off from her time on the stairs.
“That’s because Dougie is a dipshit,” Lou responds, turning to leave before Brenda can reply.
I bite the inside of my cheeks to slow the smile from forming. Even Deb, who is nearly as uptight as Brenda, is smirking behind her.
“Doug is most certainly not a dipshit; he is just a slow learner,” Brenda huffs before following Lou.
“Your room is all set, and I stocked your bathroom with fresh towels. Good to have you back, sweetheart,” Deb tells me. I know it’s taking everything she has not to add, “I only wish your sister and mother were here, too.”
CHAPTER FOUR
It’s only 9:00 a.m. and work already feels like a vacation. If I were back in Lansing, I would have already fielded ten calls, twenty texts, and attended at least one Zoom meeting before my second cup of coffee. Today, I’ve left my cell phone on my nightstand in the lodge. Anyone who could need me in this life knows right where I’m at—the dock.
“But what if they don’t pay? What if they steal the boat?”
I smile. “Oh, sweet Robbie. This is Grady Lake. If someone were to try to load a Benard rental boat at any of the public ramps, my aunts would begin getting calls before it was secured on the trailer. And the reason we allow checks as payment is because we’re old school and the tourists appreciate that. We’re never going to be like the Palmers.”
I’m not foolish enough to think it can ever be perfect again, especially without Malorie and Mom, but Grady is the only place that has ever felt like home, and my soul craves it. No rush-hour traffic, no trendy overpriced restaurants, no cheating men to break my heart. Just a quaint little town on the lake, where I know everyone except the handful of seasonal tourists who aren’t yet regulars.
I’ve been on the road in my packed-to-the-limit Highlander for a little over two hours when my phone rings. I smile before pushing the Bluetooth button, enabling Nicole’s voice to fill the car.
“Heard you got dumped, you little bitch.”
God, I’ve missed her.
“I got cheated on. I dumped him. There’s a difference,” I respond.
“Yeah, yeah. Are you really coming home or is Lou fucking with me?”
“I’m coming home. On my way now. Sorry I didn’t call . . . it’s been a weird couple of weeks living with the jerk while I got everything ready to move.”
I know her so well; I swear I can hear her smiling before she speaks.
“Want me to light him on fire?”
I let out a quick laugh. “Maybe.”
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re coming. We’ve got one week to get our Labor Day float ready for the boat parade. I haven’t won since you left town and I’m fucking sick of losing. Father Ryan was even at the Grab N Go yesterday talking shit about it.”
Our senior year, we made a 007-themed float and Nicole appealed to the perverted tendencies of the lead judge, Mr. Mayscott, by wearing a blonde wig and a thin white t-shirt that said “Pussy Galore” on the front, while also forcing me into six-inch heels and an entirely-too-short sequined miniskirt. My cousin, Dougie, inexplicably dressed as Austin Powers, manned the boat. We blared “Secret Agent Man” from the speakers as we made our lap around the lake, repeatedly bending down to refill our empty Coke cans with UV Vodka until the bottle was empty. We hoisted our first-place trophy in the air during our victory lap, and the elderly women of the Grady Lake Knitting Club have held a grudge ever since. Covering every inch of their 1991 Suncruiser Pontoon with yarn scraps must have been time consuming, but it wasn’t enough to sway the judges’ attention from two scantily clad eighteen-year-olds and the antics of my dipshit cousin, Dougie.
“What’s our theme?” I ask.
“You’re the brains of this operation; just get your ass up here.”
I shake my head. When Nicole is involved, I’m always the brains of the operation.
“I’ll be in late tonight. I’ll hit you up tomorrow. I’ve gotta go, I’m pulling onto the bridge.”
The Mackinac Bridge, which separates the Lower Peninsula of Michigan from the Upper Peninsula, is five miles of pure terror, suspended high over the lake. Each trip I take, I grip my steering wheel with white knuckles like it’s my first time to ever cross. In 1989, a sweet waitress driving an ’87 Yugo blew off the bridge and fell to her death, and it’s the cautionary tale we all recall the minute our tires hit the grates. If it happened to her, it could happen to us.
Luckily, there’s not much wind today, so I shift my focus from impending doom to the beauty of the Straits of Mackinac below me, which connect the two Great Lakes of Huron and Michigan. I made a few friends in college who grew up in landlocked states and swore the Great Lakes were as big as the ocean. They’d never seen anything like the beauty of the vast, blue, and sometimes dangerous bodies of freshwater. It always made me feel like I took my childhood for granted. This state really is a sight to be seen.
I reach over to dig into my purse as I approach the north end of the bridge, where the toll booths stand. As I pull up to the window, a nice older woman greets me with a strong accent, the same one that I somehow seem to have lost over the years.
“Hi, there! How are ya? That’ll be four dollars.”
I nearly drop the change from my hand.
“Four dollars? When did that go up?”
She laughs. “Oh, years now, my dear. If yer short, I can just give ya an envelope, and you can mail us a check when ya get home.”
“No, no. I’ve got the money. I just can’t believe it. I swear it was less than two dollars when I was in college, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention the last few times because my boyfriend was driving. Well, ex-boyfriend.”
“You should see the price of milk,” she says with a wink as she takes the ones from my hand. “Enjoy your time in God’s country.”
I exhale as I pull away from the booth, not knowing when I’ll be going back, or when I’ll be able to even afford to leave Grady once I arrive. I was getting dangerously close to making six-figures at my job, and I’m giving it up to bus tables and make beds at my family’s inn, where I’ll be lucky to make minimum wage during the winter. I’m going to have to bust my ass for the next month to stockpile money from the tourists before they disappear for the off-season. Sure, we get our fair share of snowmobilers, but that won’t be until there’re enough inches on the ground to accommodate them, and they definitely don’t tip like the summer tourists.
Benard’s Lakeside Inn features an award-winning (Northern Michigan’s Best Friday Night Fish Fry, twenty years and counting) restaurant, flanked by five cabins on each side and several slips for boat and Jet Ski parking at the waterfront. Behind the restaurant is the lodge, which features a rustic lobby for guests to check in to their cabins, a small laundry room, and an oak staircase, which leads up to the private residences. The Benard residences. Now it’s just my three aunts, Cousin Dougie, and a few empty rooms; but at one time it was filled with laughter, lively conversation, and the sounds of a family life well lived. I lived with my extended family there from the time I was two years old until I left for college at eighteen. Before I moved into the dorms at Michigan State, that old lodge was the only home I’d ever known. A picture of my great-grandparents, who founded Benard’s in 1913, hangs next to the front door of the lodge, and it’s tradition to kiss our fingers and tap the frame for good luck on our way out each morning. The irony is not lost on me that we still do this, despite the fact that half the family is now dead or missing. Our good luck ritual doesn’t seem to be doing much good at all.
CHAPTER THREE
I stop at Grady Grab N Go to see Nicole as I pull into town. She’s been working at her dad’s bait shop/convenience store since we were in high school. He is getting close to retirement so, more often than not, she’s running the place while he is holed up inside his tiny cabin a few miles down the road from the shop. Nicole and I call it the “Hidey Hole” because it’s tucked in the middle of the pines on five acres, and the man still has not procured internet service, and all major cell carriers drop signal before you make it up the driveway. If you want to get ahold of Richard Lowery, landline is your only option. Several developers have offered entirely too much money for his extra acreage over the years, and he hasn’t considered them for a second. That shitty little cabin is his refuge. Nicole, not one to be sentimental, says once he dies, she’ll have it sold before his body is even in the ground.
“Well, if it isn’t Grady Lake’s prodigal daughter returning home.”
I slam my car door and spin to see Nicole’s Grandma Mae sitting in the same spot she’s been planted for years—the faded white rocking chair next to the store’s entrance, tilted at the perfect angle to see both the lake and the Grab N Go parking lot so she doesn’t miss a moment of action in either location.
“I’m no biblical expert, but didn’t the prodigal son piss away his inheritance and then return home to beg for his dad’s forgiveness?” I ask.
Mae considers this for a moment before her lips curl into a wry smile.
“Maybe that was a bad example because we know your good-for-nothing father never gave you a damn thing, and you sure won’t be asking for his forgiveness. Not on my watch.”
“Hah!” I take a few steps before bending down and pulling her into an embrace. She smells like cinnamon rolls and cherry Swisher Sweets, just like I remember. “So glad to be home, where everyone knows Charles David is an asshole.”
“Anyone who has met the man for five minutes knows he’s an asshole, Katie Bug.”
I’ve somehow still got a soft spot for my dad, who lives roughly an hour away from Grady in a town called Marquette. He and my mom divorced shortly after I was born. She immediately petitioned to change mine and Malorie’s surnames back to Benard, as well as her own. She reportedly didn’t get an argument out of him. Although he’s a drunk and a braggard, he’s all I’ve got left of my immediate family, so I do my best to keep the peace. I usually see him once a year around Christmas when he comes downstate to visit. Each trip begins and ends the same—with an argument about his drinking and a desperate plea for him not to drive. I lose that battle every year, which is probably why I don’t press him to visit more often.
“I warned your dear mother never to trust a man with two first names,” Mae grumbles.
“So you’ve told me,” I reply with a smile. She’s been saying those words to me since I was ten years old. “Where’s that useless granddaughter of yours?”
This gets a roaring laugh from Mae. Nothing tickles her more than when I verbally harass Nicole. On cue, the bell above the front door rings and Nicole sticks her head out.
“Mae-Mae, I told you not to talk to strangers.”
I take a running start at Nicole, but she steps out of the doorway and catches me, swinging me down into a headlock, her signature move.
“I can’t stand you,” I tell her.
“Yeah, I can’t stand you either,” she replies, before releasing her grip and immediately pulling me into a hug.
“You two have been acting like this your entire lives. You’re grown adults now and you need to start acting like it,” Mae says, but she’s still got that smile, which tells me she secretly hopes we never grow up.
“You just missed Lou. She came to get a pack of cigs and said the aunts are stressing her out. She let them know you were coming about an hour ago,” Nicole tells me.
“They’ll get over it,” I say. Mae coughs and gives Nicole a knowing look. “What? What does that mean?” I ask.
“So, Aunt Deb came by to get a few bags of ice because one of the bar coolers took a shit. She said to tell you when you got in that you’re on dock duty for a week. She knew you’d stop here first.”
“Shit.”
Dock duty isn’t so bad in the spring when we’re all desperate for time in the sun after a long and miserable winter, but working the dock at the end of the summer is pure misery. It only gets to be in the mid-eighties temperature wise, but sitting out in that sun all day will make you swear it’s one hundred degrees. An eight-hour shift is filled with manning the gas pumps for boaters, handling the boat and Jet Ski rentals, cleaning up whatever mess they left in the rented boats, and picking up the trash left behind on the swimming beach. Most of our guests are respectful, but even moms with the best intentions tend to leave a trail of chaos after being out in the heat all day with toddlers. In short, dock duty is a punishment in August and usually reserved for the newest hire. I’m being punished for not telling Brenda and Deb I was coming back home.
“I’ll deal with the aunts,” I say before retreating to my car.
“Good luck,” Nicole and Mae say in unison, shaking their heads.
A quarter of a mile later—this measurement has been memorized since I started working at the family business, where I directed out-of-town customers to the Grab N Go on an hourly basis—I pull in behind the lodge and strategically grab my two heaviest bags from the back of the SUV. Maybe if I’m struggling, the aunts will take mercy on me. I’m sure to add a few grunts as I enter through the back door in case they are within earshot. I gasp when the door closes behind me. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be there, but Brenda and Deb are sitting side-by-side on the back stairwell, which leads up to our living quarters. Who knows how long they’ve been staring at this back door, waiting for me to walk in.
“Well, well, well,” says Brenda.
“How nice of you to let us know you were moving home. That you and Dave broke up. That you quit your job,” Deb adds.
“Guys, can you not cut me a break just this once? It was hard enough to tell Lou. I didn’t want to have to tell the story again. She’s just who happened to answer the phone when I called.”
Brenda’s stern face softens slightly until Deb responds, “Nice try, kid. You called Lou’s cell phone directly.”
Damn it.
“Okay, you caught me. But you need to remember that I love you both very much.”
I drop both bags at my side and climb a few stairs up, leaning forward to pull them both into an embrace. “I’m your favorite niece, you can’t stay mad at me.”
“You’re our only niece,” Deb whispers. “I guess we will forgive you.”
The only thing worse than dealing with an angry Deb and Brenda is dealing with them when they are emotional. It’s unbearable. They are the two most sentimental women on the planet. My mother, who ate red meat for every meal, smoked a pack a day, and never went to the doctor, tragically died of a heart attack the year after Malorie disappeared. The aunts will tell anyone who will listen that their sister died of a broken heart, as if that was an actual medical condition. Whenever there is a beautiful sunset, they both tearfully remind everyone that red was Malorie’s favorite color. I shared a room with her and am not sure she even had a favorite color. When Michael Jackson died, they watched funeral footage for days and sobbed uncontrollably in their rooms. That’s the only vacation I can remember Lou taking—she came down and spent a week in Detroit, casino gambling and watching the Tigers, simply to get away from Deb and Brenda and their inexplicable grief over a pop star they’d never met.
Lou is the outcast of the siblings. She’s gruff, sarcastic, unemotional, and could probably run the entire restaurant by herself on a Friday night. She’s a badass. Someone recently unearthed a clip of her telling Diane Sawyer to piss off when she came to town during the search for Mal in 2003, hoping for an interview. The unaired clip was the top trending sound on TikTok for weeks when an anonymous user uploaded it this year. One of the Kardashians even used the sound over a video about paparazzi. I tried to explain it to Lou, who responded that she doesn’t give a damn about any sort of Tic Tac, but if anyone needed a statement, she wanted them to know that Diane Sawyer can still piss off.
“Will you two shut up and let the girl breathe?”
Lou comes around the corner from the front desk and peeks her head into the back entrance to the stairwell. “Hey kid, we’ve missed you.”
I jog down the steps and into her arms. Hugging Lou feels like home. It’s not a warm embrace or an extended hug; she just awkwardly pats me on the back and mumbles something like “yeah, yeah” before backing away. My mom used to tell me that Lou was the only Benard that wasn’t breastfed, and it showed.
“These two miserable broads are trying to put you on dock duty, but I’ve got a new hire starting tomorrow. If you show him the ropes for a day or two, you can come inside and serve the lunch shift for the rest of the week,” Lou tells me. I look at the other aunts and they simply roll their eyes. Lou is a hard-ass to everyone in this world except for me. You may think it’s because I’ve lost Mom and Mal, but that woman has favored me since the day I was born. She says we are kindred souls, whatever that means.
“I’d be happy to train the new hire, Lou. Thank you.”
Although I don’t love the dock, training some teenage kid to pump gas and handle the tourists sounds like a walk in the park compared to what I’d been dealing with at the PR agency the past few years. A break from the stress is just what I’m craving.
“It would be nice of you to show that same patience and understanding with my Douglas. He’s worked his entire life in that restaurant, and you won’t let him manage a single shift on his own,” Brenda says, standing up and dusting her pants off from her time on the stairs.
“That’s because Dougie is a dipshit,” Lou responds, turning to leave before Brenda can reply.
I bite the inside of my cheeks to slow the smile from forming. Even Deb, who is nearly as uptight as Brenda, is smirking behind her.
“Doug is most certainly not a dipshit; he is just a slow learner,” Brenda huffs before following Lou.
“Your room is all set, and I stocked your bathroom with fresh towels. Good to have you back, sweetheart,” Deb tells me. I know it’s taking everything she has not to add, “I only wish your sister and mother were here, too.”
CHAPTER FOUR
It’s only 9:00 a.m. and work already feels like a vacation. If I were back in Lansing, I would have already fielded ten calls, twenty texts, and attended at least one Zoom meeting before my second cup of coffee. Today, I’ve left my cell phone on my nightstand in the lodge. Anyone who could need me in this life knows right where I’m at—the dock.
“But what if they don’t pay? What if they steal the boat?”
I smile. “Oh, sweet Robbie. This is Grady Lake. If someone were to try to load a Benard rental boat at any of the public ramps, my aunts would begin getting calls before it was secured on the trailer. And the reason we allow checks as payment is because we’re old school and the tourists appreciate that. We’re never going to be like the Palmers.”
