raise Aaron felt almost too hard to carry on. By the time the sun came up each morning, she snapped herself out of it and faced the day, ready to soldier on.
“We should get stuff marked with the WIC sticker,” Aaron advised, pointing out a green-and-black tag under a display of canned tuna.
She put back the can of albacore as though it had bitten her. “Why on earth would you say that?”
“Chandler told me his mother gets tons of stuff with WIC. Women, Infants and Children,” he explained. “It’s a feld … fed … Some kind of program for poor people.”
“We are not poor people,” Kate snapped.
She didn’t realize how loudly she’d spoken until a man at the end of the aisle turned to look at her. It was the same one she’d stared at in the parking lot, only he was much closer now. Beneath a five-o’clock shadow, she could make out a strong, clean jawline. He had traded the shades for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, one side repaired with duct tape. In the split second that she met his gaze, she observed that his eyes had the depth and color of aged whiskey. But duct tape? Was he a loser? A nerd?
She whipped around to hide her flaming cheeks and shoved the cart fast in the other direction.
“See?” Aaron said. “This is how I know you would never quit your job. You get too embarrassed about being poor.”
“We are not—” Kate forced herself to stop. She took in a deep, calming breath. “Listen, bud. We are fine. Better than fine. I wasn’t getting anywhere at the paper, and it was time to move on, anyway.”
“So are we poor or not?”
She wished he would lower his voice. “Not,” she assured him.
In reality, her salary at the paper was barely a living wage, and the majority of her income came from the Seattle rental properties left to her by her father. Still, the job had defined her. She was a writer, and now that she’d been let go, she felt as though the rug had been ripped out from under her. “This means we get to spend the whole summer together, just the two of us.” She studied Aaron’s expression, spoke up before he turned too forlorn. “You got a problem with that?”
“Yeah,” he said with a twinkle of mischief in his eye. “Maybe I do.”
“Smart aleck.” She tugged the bill of his Seattle Mariners baseball cap down over his eyes and pushed onward. Lord, she thought, before she knew it, her little red-haired, freckle-faced boy would be as tall as she was.
The storm of his mood struck as it always did, without warning and no specific trigger. “This is stupid,” he snapped, his eyes narrowing, the color draining from his face. “It’s going to be a stupid, boring summer and I don’t even know why I bothered to come.”
“Aaron, don’t start—”
“I’m not starting.” He ripped off his hat and hurled it to the floor in the middle of the aisle.
“Good,” she said, trying to keep her voice emotionless, “because I have shopping to do. The quicker we finish, the quicker we get to the lake.” “I hate the lake.”
Hoping they hadn’t attracted any more attention, she steered the cart around him and fumbled through the rest of the shopping without letting on how shaken she was. She refused to allow his inability to control his behavior control her. When would it end? She had consulted doctors and psychologists, had read hundreds of books on the topic, but not one could ever give her the solution to Aaron’s temper and his pain. So far, the most effective solution appeared to be time. The minutes seemed endless as she worked her way up and down the aisles, ignoring him the whole time. Sometimes she wished she could get into his head, find the source of his pain and make it better. But there was no Band-Aid or salve for the invisible wounds he carried. Well-meaning people claimed he needed a father. Well, duh, thought Kate.
“Mom,” said a quiet, contrite voice behind her. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll try harder not to get all mad and loud.”
“I hope so,” she said, her heart quietly breaking, as it always did when they struggled. “It’s hurtful and embarrassing when you lose your temper and yell like that.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he said again.
She knew a dozen strategies, maybe more, for where to go with this teachable moment. But they’d just driven three hours from Seattle, and she was anxious to get to the cottage. “We need stuff for s’mores,” she said.
Relief softened his face and he was himself again, eager-to-please Aaron, the one the teachers at his school saw so rarely. His storms were intense but quickly over, with no lingering bitterness.
“I’ll go,” he said, and headed off on the hunt.
Some practices at the lake house were steeped in tradition and ancient, mystical lore. Certain things always had to be done in certain ways. S’mores were just one of them. They always had to be made with honey grahams, not cinnamon, and the gooey marshmallow had to be rolled in miniature M&Ms. Nothing else would do. Whenever there was a s’mores night, they also had to play charades on the beach. She made a mental list of the other required activities, wondering if she’d remember to honor them all. Supper had to be announced each evening with the ringing of an old brass ship’s bell suspended from a beam on the porch. Come July, they had to buy fireworks from the Makah tribe’s weather-beaten roadside stand, and set them off to celebrate the Fourth. To mark the summer solstice, they would haul out and de-cobweb the croquet set and play until the sun set at ten o’clock at night, competing as though life itself depended on the outcome. When it rained, the Scrabble board had to come out for games of vicious competition. This summer, Aaron was old enough to learn Hearts and Whist, though with just the two of them, she wasn’t sure how they’d manage some of the games.
All the lakeside-cottage traditions had been invented before Kate was born, and were passed down through generations with the solemnity of ancient ritual. She noticed that Aaron and his cousins—her brother Phil’s brood—embraced the traditions and adhered to them fiercely, just as she and Phil had done before them.
Aaron came back with the crackers, miniature M&Ms and marshmallows.
“Thanks,” she said, adding them to the cart. “I think that’s about it.” As she trolled through the last aisle, she noticed the guy in the John Deere cap again, studying a display of fishing lures. This time Aaron spotted him, too. For a moment, the boy’s face was stripped of everything except a pained combination of curiosity and yearning as he sidled closer. The guy hooked his thumb into the rear pocket of his pants, and Aaron did the same. The older he got, the more Aaron identified with men, even strangers in the grocery store, it seemed.
Then she caught herself furtively studying the object of Aaron’s attention, too. The stranger had the oddest combination of raw masculine appeal and backwoods roughness. She wondered how much he’d overheard earlier.
Snap out of it, she thought, moving the cart to the checkout line. She didn’t give a hoot about what this Carhartt-wearing, mullet-sporting local yokel thought of her. He looked like the kind of guy who didn’t have a birth certificate.
“Aaron,” she said, “time to go.” She turned away to avoid eye contact with the stranger, and pretended to browse the magazine racks. This was pretty much the extent of her involvement with the news media. It was shameful, really, as she considered herself a journalist.
