Drift

By Amanda M. Blake

After her mother's funeral, Dani nearly drowns at the lake where she's lived her entire life. She learned to swim before she could walk, but the water tingles and prickles over her skin, drawing her under.

She's saved by a stranger who claims that the rains follow him, who sees when her father treats her the way a father shouldn't.

Her mother left behind more than just memories and an empty lake house. And if Dani can't find it, she'll never break free from the shackles that her mother couldn't escape.

"I have so much to tell you, my love. I can only hope that you heard me."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda M. Blake
• Release date: May 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223991540

Book preview

1

Ihave something to tell you.

I’m not allowed to tell it to you, but I’ve told it so many times. They were many stories. They are the same story.

I have so much to tell you, my love. I can only hope that you heard me.

2

The funeral was a small affair, with just Dani and her father in the family row. Miriam Ellman had been the only child of her estranged parents. Dani had never met her grandparents on either side—dead or distant, she never knew.

The Presbyterian minister did the service, with an umbrella to keep his suit dry, although he would need to clean his boots of mud from the newly dug earth.

Her father carried his own umbrella. Dani didn’t. He’d asked if she’d wanted one before the funeral, but she’d refused. She wasn’t going to ask him to share now.

She didn’t care if her black dress got drenched, if her hair flattened to messy waves on her shoulders. It was spring. One expected it to rain, and a little water never hurt anyone.

Only a few other people attended the funeral. Lily O’Leary and her husband, Kirk, from the marina where Dani worked. Helena Meetchum, from the teahouse that Miriam had loved, one of the few places she’d visited regularly even after she’d fallen ill. Billy Grueller, who had been delivering groceries to their house for as long as Dani could remember.

They’d all had the sense to stand out in the rain with umbrellas. Billy had offered his, but Dani had shaken her head. If she cried, it would be better with raindrops on her cheeks so no one could tell.

With his umbrella, it was clear that her father, Luke Mansfield, shed no tears for his wife as the casket lowered into the ground. The blue tint to the day rendered his face pale. His lips were a thin pencil drawing delineated with shadows instead of color. He clenched his strong jaw tight. Above the black waterproof overcoat, his head looked like the bust of a military man—stoic, hard, dignified—the stone a betrayal of nothing.

Her father was a private man. She’d inherited that from him. They hid their emotions in different ways.

Her mother had worn her emotions on her sleeve, although she had been as reticent as her husband, as her daughter. They had lived in a quiet household, but she’d never cried behind closed doors as quietly as she’d thought.

Dani stood, roses in her arms. She didn’t know where her father had found the flowers. She thought they might have come from the florist who worked in the grocery. A dozen red roses with thick, thornless stems, the kind that someone bought on the way home from work to apologize to a spouse or when they’d forgotten an anniversary. It was not the sort of thing to give to your wife of twenty years, the mother of your child for more than nineteen, when she passed away. It was not the kind of thing to bury.

Her mother hadn’t even liked roses, hadn’t liked flowers that had been cut from their stems. She’d loved the giant magnolia tree, the crepe myrtles, the day lilies that lined the backyard. She’d loved sunflowers and bougainvillea in the heat of summer, pansies planted in the autumn and nurtured all winter, the African violets, succulents, and orchids kept in the kitchen window with the herbs. She’d had a green thumb and she’d loved flowers, but she’d hated that so many people seemed to enjoy them dying rather than living.

Freeing the flowers from the ugly pink plastic around them while the minister consecrated her mother to dust was too much like opening peppermint candy in a theater, but if Dani had to lay flowers where her mother would rest, she wanted to do it as right as possible.

She stepped toward the lowered coffin to place the flowers on the wooden lid. There hadn’t been a viewing. Dani had seen her dead; her father hadn’t wanted to see her dead.

It was a plain coffin, nothing overly varnished, ornate, or expensive. If her mother could have been buried without a coffin at all in the backyard near the lake, she would have been happiest.

The dark red roses seemed richer against the stained pine. Water droplets glittered on the petals as the coffin descended all six feet down.

Dani remained at the edge of the grave, imagining her mother in the earth. "Death and life are all the same in nature," she’d once said to Dani. There can be no life without death, no death without life. The forest floor is full of death that allows the living to thrive. We consume the dead and the dying to nourish our bodies. And one day, I will make plants and worms and insects as happy as I do now after a week in my garden.

Dani understood and didn’t understand at the same time. She saw the connections, death and life tangled together like yarn in a loom. But when she imagined her mother decaying, mushrooms growing on her hands and a tree root penetrating the box to curl through her ribs, worms in her mouth, Dani’s knees weakened, buckled, and the gloomy day darkened.

Billy darted to grab her, but her father got there first, just as Dani knelt on the false turf and started listing to the side.

Billy took her arm to keep her steady. Do you need any help?

We’re fine. Her father wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

I can get her a bottle of water from the funeral—

We’re fine. Her father turned them around to lead Dani back to the chairs, putting himself between her and Billy. She’s fine.

As soon as she sat on the hard, wet chair, the world stopped falling around her.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But her mother wasn’t ashes, and she wouldn’t become dust. She was just dead, and in Coyne, with its water tourism and spring monsoons, the earth was always mud.

Dani’s dress soaked her seat on the way home. When her father pulled the sedan into the gravel driveway, he handed her a towel from the back seat. She accepted it without a word. It had stopped raining, so she didn’t have to run up to the porch to ruin what the air-conditioning had managed to dry.

Her father went into the house. Dani stayed on the porch. She kicked off her shoes next to the front door and wrung out her hair and skirt before patting her skin dry. She’d have to peel the dress off eventually, but she didn’t want to drip on the floors.

And with her father in the house and her mother no longer in it, she didn’t want to go inside yet.

She draped the towel over her arm and walked around the porch to the back, where the loveseat swing creaked in the breeze. From the swing, she could see the whole backyard, into the woods on either side of their lake house cabin, down to the pier, and out over the lake. A canoe rocked next to the pier ladder, the fishing boat on the other side; they kept the pontoon at the marina.

The light through the clouds filtered the world in blue, but everything that could be green was exuberant against the gloomy background. The water was gray. She never understood why people said that water was blue. It was clear in a bathtub, clear in the rain, and in rivers and lakes, it was gray or brown. Against the water and sky, the green around the lake seemed too bright in its relishing of the rain. Sun and summer temperatures faded the green, but when summer came—with its tourists and summer residents—Dani sometimes wondered whether it wore out from the noise instead. Boat motors. A pounding bass line. Screaming children as overheated as the green.

For now, with the town too soggy for tourism, the lake was quiet, its movement only from the breeze and the rain.

And the house was quiet. But it had always been quiet.

She couldn’t pretend that her mother was still in her bedroom. Or perhaps fussing about in the kitchen, although her mother hadn’t been able to leave the bedroom on her own for months before she’d died. For a moment, though, it felt like nothing had happened, nothing had changed. Summer was different, but these dazed, lazy afternoons in the gray during spring and fall, and in the black, gray, and white of winter, seasons seemed like they would persist forever in a never-ending cycle—as they would—and everything would restart the same as it was before, unchanged—as it wouldn’t.

Dani had been a child here, but she hadn’t been a child in a long time. Her mother had been young, had been healthy, had smiled when it had just been the two of them, and it had mostly been the two of them. When Dani’s father had come home, there would be no singing in the kitchen, although her mother would close her eyes and lean against her husband when he’d kiss her forehead while she cut vegetables or made bread or cake.

Then there had been no songs, no sound of the knife on the cutting board, no scents of bread or cake or cookies unless Dani had made them. Most times, she’d been too tired, and her mother hadn’t had the appetite. Dani had tried to sing for her mother when it had just been the two of them in those last months, but she’d never been the songbird, and when Dani’s father came home, he preferred the quiet.

It was quiet now.

Dani rocked in the swing and watched the rain and the ripples. She shivered in her cold dress under the towel wrapped around her like a blanket, but she didn’t mind the chill until the day became darker.

I knocked.

Dani turned around in the swing. Helena stood at the corner of the porch with a casserole dish covered in foil.

Dad’s probably in his office, Dani said.

His office was on the third floor, what would have been the attic in another life. When she was little, he’d let her play on the floors if she played quietly. She had learned to tell herself stories in her head instead of speaking them out loud. The attic had seemed a magical place to her imaginative mind—its ceilings the ridges and gables of the house, the walls lined with books and cabinets, and his massive desk in front of the giant port window overlooking the lake. Sunlight pouring into the room had anointed her father as he’d worked on matters incomprehensible to a child. The attic had been like a ship, her father the captain, and she invisible in the shadows and mote beams of the room.

Dani stood to let Helena into the house. She unwrapped the towel from her shoulders and draped it over the back of a barstool at the kitchen island.

You haven’t even gotten out of your wet clothes? Helena set the casserole dish on the stovetop. Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.

Dani wasn’t expecting the hug, especially since she was still a little wet and Helena was wearing nice clothes, but she let the woman embrace her, let tears fall on her shoulder like more raindrops. Helena was nothing like Dani’s mother. Her mother had been thin, delicate and bird-like in the end, and she’d never seemed old to Dani, even when cancer had stolen her youth. Helena was a generous woman, and if Dani had had a grandmother, she would have imagined her like Helena. She smelled like lasagna.

A hot, home-cooked meal would be nice on a rainy evening, and Dani wouldn’t have to think of something to make for her and her father. That’s what covered dishes were apparently for—so a grieving family didn’t have to expend the energy, not that Dani cooked much the rest of the time.

They’re just clothes, Dani said. They dry.

I meant to tell you at the funeral, but you were upset, so I thought it best to leave you and your father alone for a bit. I wanted to bring this over, though. It’ll get you through a few good dinners. I know these last few months have been hard for you. If you need anything from me, anything at all, just give my shop a call. Helena fussed her fingers through Dani’s straggly rain hair. Your mother was a beautiful woman, Dani. A kind, meek, beautiful woman. It was a pleasure whenever she came to the shop. I’d watch her walk into town every day, then I’d watch her walk back. It’s not a short walk.

It was a small town. Short was relative. They didn’t have their own car, but Dani and her mother had been able to walk or ride a bike everywhere they needed to go, and with the groceries delivered, their little town had everything they needed. Anything else, her father could bring back with him when he came home, or he could arrange to have things shipped in. But for as long as Dani could remember, the house had been furnished, and Dani couldn’t recall her mother adding anything new to it except her plants and what she could make with her hands—quilts and blankets with materials from the sewing store next to the teahouse, everything she concocted in the kitchen with ingredients from the grocery.

Dani had ridden her bicycle to school until she’d graduated, and she continued to bike to work. They had the canoe if she wanted to take a more direct route. She’d dock at the marina, and from there, she could walk right into town.

Her mother had just liked to walk. Dani thought that might be the town’s strongest memory of Miriam Ellman—a slight, quiet woman with dark hair and floral dresses who walked into town for tea.

Thank you. Dani didn’t know how to respond to other people’s grief. They seemed to want to say something, and so she felt the need to reply, but she wasn’t sure they were actually communicating with each other.

Are you going to be okay? Has everything been taken care of? I’m sure I can get the church to see about helping you with…with the sickroom, if you don’t want to go in there again.

Her mother hadn’t died in the master bedroom. They’d arranged a sickroom in one of the smaller bedrooms, a place to set up the hospital bed and machinery and IV drips, where her mother could look out the picture window at the lake when she raised the back of the bed upright.

The sickroom had become the deathroom. Dani hadn’t been in there since the funeral home had taken her mother away.

The hospital already came for their things. There was only the hospital bed in there now, probably still propped up, with the sheets in disarray and the pillow askew. Her father had bought the hospital bed and the sheets to go with it. They belonged there now. If her father wanted to throw them out, he would arrange for it. Dani didn’t intend to go back in. Everything’s taken care of.

What about you, sweetie? Helena placed her restless hands on Dani’s shoulders. Your father’s always gone on business. It’ll just be you in this big, big house. Are you sure you’ll be okay?

Dani nodded.

Your mother was always quiet, too. You look so much like her. Helena framed her face, holding her still as a photograph.

Dani did look like her mother. She looked nothing like her father. Not her chin, the shape of her eyes, the length of her neck. In pictures of her and her mother, Dani always looked like a younger version of her. Not identical, but clearly hers.

That’s a way to honor her, you know, Helena said. You carry her with you, her memory in your reflection.

Parents were half and half of DNA. That’s just the way things were. She carried her father as much as her mother, even if her mother’s visible traits had won out in the end. But Helena was only saying things to say things, and Dani let her.

You take care of yourself, now. I know how the storms can get. And I know how the quiet can be when there’s no one to share it with. If you need anything, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call us. And I know you and your father aren’t members, but the church will do anything you need. Are you sure I can’t get you something else? I can do a grocery run.

Dani shook her head. Billy will be coming on Monday, same as every week. We’ll be all right, Mrs. Meetchum.

Helena, please. You’re a woman now. You can use my first name.

She was still getting used to that. It was even weirder when she met old teachers at the marina and had to use their first names, too.

Thank you, Helena. Have a good evening. Dani led her out the back door instead of the front so that she could leave the way she came.

Give my condolences to your father as well, Helena said gently, glancing up at the golden light in the porthole window.

Dani waited until everything outside the windows had gone dark before climbing the two flights of stairs to the attic door.

She hadn’t been in the attic since she was a child. Her mother had always been the one to call her husband down for dinner.

Dani stopped outside the door, smooth, unvarnished hardwoods under her feet as she shifted from one to the other, unsure whether he even wanted her to knock or if he wanted to be left alone. There was no creak on the landing to alert him to her presence, so she stood there, still in her black funeral dress that she never would have chosen for herself on a spring day, feeling more bedraggled than ever with wrinkled fabric, undone hair, and bare face. But her stomach was growling in spite of her lack of appetite, and she would rather eat the lasagna sooner than later to make hunger leave her alone.

Finally, Dani knocked on the door.

Yes? Even a neutral answer made her hand shake as she pressed her palm to the door.

Mrs. Meetchum brought a covered dish. Do you want to come down, or should I warm up a plate and bring it up?

Go ahead and warm up what you want. I’ll come down later.

On her way down the stairs, Dani sighed in relief.

Her father had only yelled at her once.

Fourth grade, she thought it was, almost ten years old. She had used his office to play hide and seek with one of her friends, tucked herself into the small space between the built-in bookshelves and one of the gabled walls, a place that required her to contort into the shadow and cover herself with her hair.

Then he had come into the office and closed the door behind him. She hadn’t known he was coming home, hadn’t heard him enter the house, and she wasn’t allowed in the office without his presence or permission.

She’d covered her mouth with her hands, listened to him move about, the subtlest of groans under his shoes as he’d stepped behind his desk. Rummaged through drawers. Fluttered papers. Turned on his laptop and waited for it to boot up. He didn’t listen to music in the attic, didn’t have a television. The radio and the television were downstairs in the living room. When he was at the lake house, sometimes he would come down from the attic and watch television or movies with his wife and his daughter. But the attic was virtually silent except for ambient sound. She’d tried desperately not to be one of them.

With Melody running around the house as though she were three times her own diminutive size, he would have eventually gone down to tell Melody that if she wanted to make so much noise, she needed to go outside—inside was for inside voices and calmer footsteps. Dani would have emerged from her spot and hurried down the stairs behind him, hopefully darting down the hall so that he would never have to know she’d gone into his office. That had been her plan.

But her foot had slipped on the wood, and she hadn’t been able to muffle a gasp.

Her father had darted from his desk and advanced upon her, dark and monstrous against the light from the window, tall as the highest roof peak as he’d loomed over her.

What have I always told you, Danica? Her father never raised his voice, but he had then, loud as thunder.

For a moment, he’d terrified her, because as wide and angry as his eyes had been in his shadowy face, she hadn’t known what he would do. Would he ground her? Spank her? Hit her? He’d never done any of those things, but he’d looked at that moment as though he could do all three, and worse.

And that was difficult to forget. All the other moments when he was soft-spoken—which didn’t mean he was tender or gentle, although he could be—all the other moments when he was patient, if awkward, all the other times he was completely absent or completely present… They’d all faded, and her father had been a stranger, as he had somehow always been, more and more so as she’d grown up with just her mother and herself in