Page 96 of Hound Dog
He stopped rowing and reached out to take the pen from me. “Why’d you keep this?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of stupid, I guess, but that night meant a lot to me. And there was something poignant about using this exact pen to check off the items on my mom’s bucket list.”
With a shrug, I reached out to take the pen back from him, but he pulled it out of reach.
“That’s not even alittlestupid.” He held my gaze a moment longer before handing the pen back to me and grabbing the oars to begin rowing once more.
I gazed across the water at the setting sun. An array of orange and red hues bounced off the water, rippling with the small waves we created. Evenings like this in Maple Grove made me never want to return home to Rochester.
It took about fifteen minutes of rowing before we came to a cove that was set off from an island.
The most beautiful, eerie sound rang through the dusky evening. It was like a wolf’s howl… if it were being mimicked by a wooden flute. As we paddled deeper into the lake, it got louder. More distinct.
“Loons,” I whispered, recognizing the call.
“Yep,” Finn whispered. “They’re over there.”
I turned to look and accidentally sent the boat rocking. With a squeal, I gripped the edge, terrified we might flip.
“Shhhh,” he said and slid over to sit beside me. “Don’t scare them off. They’re right there in the cove.”
I followed the line of his finger to where he was pointing and gasped.
There wasn’t just one or two or even five loons in the cove.
There weredozens. Maybe even a hundred.
Finn quietly pulled a pair of binoculars from his bag and handed them to me. “This is the loon sanctuary. There are two hundred acres of protected land for the loons, but for some reason, they always congregate right here in this cove.”
We were still a few hundred feet away from the cove, and I pressed the binoculars to my eyes, trying to get a better look at the birds swimming on the water.
Even though I’d seen one before, a long time ago, I’d forgotten how breathtaking they were, with their black and white checkered feathers and beady red eyes.
“Oh my God!” I whispered, desperately trying to keep my voice quiet. “That one has a baby riding on its back!”
“A lot of them do,” he said with a chuckle. “And when they dive for fish, they can go underwater for minutes at a time. You never know where they may pop up again if they dive.”
A serene look graced his face as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. I was acutely aware of his attention, focused directly on me. A couple of minutes later, he interrupted the silence. “I’m going to row us a little closer.”
“Is it safe?”
“As long as we don’t get too close or disturb them or their babies.”
I laughed, trying my best to smother the sound so as not to scare off the birds. “Youhateloons. Why’d you take me here, you weirdo?”
He dipped the oar into the water, and smoothly, the canoe glided forward. “Becauseyoudon’thate loons.Weirdo.”
I studied his profile. The strong line of his nose. The angled cut of his chin and jaw. And the soft splay of his lips as they turned up in a small smile.
After another minute of silence, I asked quietly, “Did you come here a lot as a kid? I mean, before the incident. I assume that you avoided it after.”
He set down the oar on the floor of the canoe when we’d gotten close enough and whispered, “Nope. Even before getting attacked, I was always terrified of loons.”
“Why?”
“Imagine hearing that howling cry every morning and every night from hundreds of loons. Sitting around the firepit, they just got louder and louder as the sun went down. My brothers told us these crazy stories about how that sound was actually the ghosts of the lake. People who’d drowned here.”
I buried my snicker in my palm. “That’s so mean.”
