Cody was there. So was Lacey. The boys had gone outside to throw snow at each other in the dark.
I turned from the stove. “You can leave now.”
Her face went still. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
She left before dessert. We did not speak for four months.
Then my phone rang in the wood shop that October morning, and she told me she had found buyers.
“A resort development group,” she said when I asked who they were. “They want to expand along the shore. Their offer is generous.”
“How generous?”
She named a number.
I will not pretend it did not matter. It was real money. Enough to make most people stop and imagine repairs done, bills paid, winters warmer, a retirement easier than the one I had chosen.
I had no illusions about the lodge being simple. The roof on the main cabin had been patched too many times. The dock needed rebuilding. Some seasons barely covered operating costs after insurance, maintenance, and taxes.
But numbers only tell the truth they were designed to tell.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“I told them I’d have an answer by Friday.”
“You told them wrong.”
“Dad—”
“I have not signed anything. I have not agreed to anything. Call them back.”
“Please be reasonable.”
“Call them back, Renata.”
She hung up.
For a full minute, I stood in the shop and listened to the lake. You can hear it from the wood shop when the wind comes right, a low constant push against stone. I set my measuring tape down and called Cody.
He answered on the second ring. “Everything okay?”
“No.”
He did not ask unnecessary questions. That is one thing about Cody. When the tone changes, he hears it. I told him exactly what Renata had said.
“She called buyers?” he asked after a silence.
“That’s what she told me.”
“Without talking to you?”
“Yes.”
“Without talking to me?”
“Yes.”
Another pause. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
He arrived in his truck with coffee in a thermos and that particular expression he gets when something is wrong but he is not ready to show how wrong he thinks it is.
We sat at the kitchen table in the main lodge, the same table where my father used to do his bookkeeping in a paper ledger, and I walked him through the call again.
“She can’t sell it,” Cody said. “It’s your property.”