Page 62 of Ivory Oath

Viviana chokes on a laugh. “Dante! Watch your mouth!”

“Dad said I could!” he proudly announces.

I’m too busy reeling in the fish to think about how much trouble that little line is going to get me in later. “You must have caught a whale,” I tease.

Dante’s eyes snap to me, wide. “Really?!”

“No, not really. No whales in this lake. But this must be a big one. It’s putting up quite a fight.”

I let Dante take control as much as he can, so the back-and-forth goes on longer than it needs to. Finally, the little fish flops up onto the ice and Dante throws his hands over his head, victorious. Well, he tries to throw his hands over his head. The layers of bulk Viviana insisted he wear make it hard for him to move, let alone celebrate. But he gives it his all.

“I catched a fish!” He runs in a circle around the hole we cut, skipping and twirling. “I catched a fish!”

Viviana is grinning, but she waves him back. “Careful of the hole, bud. Don’t fall in.”

“He wouldn’t even fit with all the layers.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Still. Be careful. Dying of hypothermia definitely isn’t on the bingo card.”

I gave Dante a long lecture before we even stepped foot onto the ice about staying away from the mouth of the river. The flowing water there makes the ice thin. But it’s around a bend in the trees and Dante is still too scared of bears to venture far from us.

“Are we going to eat it?” Dante sidles closer to me, watching his fish flop on the ice. “I can clean it by myself. I watched you do the deer.”

“Cleaning a deer is a lot different than cleaning a fish.”

“I can do it,” he insists. He grips my sleeve, tugging hard. “Please, Dad. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeee?—”

“Fine.” I laugh and hold up the line. “But turn around and take a picture. Your mom is going to want to remember this.”

Just as I suspected, as soon as we turn around, Viviana is kneeling on the ice, her phone out and ready. “Say cheese!”

Once the Kodak moment is captured, Dante is all business. He leads me to the camp we’ve set up along the bank and unrolls my collection of knives.

“I can’t watch this,” Viviana declares before Dante even touches a knife. I’m not sure if it’s because of her morning sickness or the fact her baby boy is holding a knife. Probably both.

Then we get to work.

My entire life, I’ve struggled to watch people do a bad job at something that I know I can do perfectly. I’ve never been able to stand by and let someone struggle. But teaching Dante how to control his blade is so rewarding that it’s worth all the hunks of fish meat lost to his clumsy movements.

“Like this?” he asks, slowly moving the knife down the fish’s backbone.

“Perfect, bud. You’re doing great.”

He grins and keeps going and I do my best to savor this moment. To remember the angry kid who crashed into my gym a couple weeks ago and taught my heavyweight bag a lesson. In that moment, I was positive I’d ruined him.

But just like his mom, Dante is made of tougher stuff than that. He’s resilient.

I think he’ll turn out just fine.

Once the fish is prepped and there are no dangerous weapons involved, Dante’s interest wanes. “I want to skate!” He tries to twirl in a circle, but the bottoms of his snow boots grip the ice and he ends up kind of staggering around.

“We’re about to eat.” Viviana gestures to the picnic lunch she packed. “You can find the napkins or pour the soup into?—”

“I’m going to skate.” He glides clumsily along the surface of the ice. His breath puffs in front of his face in little clouds.

“Be careful!” Viviana calls after him.

Dante waves his puffy arm over his head at her in his version of confirmation.

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