Page 61 of Charlie and Her Sweet Escape
“Yeah. Dad’s a great hunter, so we always caught something. That’s usually what we ate for that year. Caribou, elk, deer, rabbit, grouse. Even several squirrels to practice our bow hunting.”
I tried not to wrinkle my nose, but it took concentrated effort. I was likely going to have to eat a squirrel out here. I only hopedI was hungry enough when it happened that I wouldn’t have to think about it too much. “Who all went?”
“At first, me, Jules, and Haydn.” Bennett pressed his finger on the stick, testing the tension, and then undid his knot and retied it. “But Jules always hated hunting. He’d much rather play ball. And once Haydn discovered girls, the last thing he wanted was to be in the middle of nowhere for a week with his brothers.
“After a while, it was just the two of us. We started researching how to make indigenous traps and experimenting with different materials. I’d read a few books on honoring the land giving thanks, and those trips became … holy.” He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “It sounds stupid.”
“Not to me. I feel that way when I’m scuba diving. Like I’m existing in this liminal space separate from the real world, where anything is possible.” I looked up from my pole and found him watching me closely.
“That’s it. My dad could spend hours talking about everything under the sun and then go days without a word between us. If I tried to talk, Dad told me I was ruining the moment, and if I wanted to come with him, I was there to listen and not be heard.” He paused, and blinked a few times. “I totally forgot about that. Anyway, I was a pill on our last trip. I didn’t feel well, and I was missing a party I’d been excited to go to. I complained the whole time and refused to help my dad do a single thing.”
Unease settled along my spine. Everything I knew about Orin was that he was manipulative and selfish, and I imagined a young Bennett doing everything he could to please this man he’d clearly idolized.
Bennett focused intensely on his trap. “Dad left right after that.”
Hehadto know that his dad’s leaving had nothing to do with his very normal-for-that-age attitude. I debated saying itanyway, but it sounded awkward in my mind, no matter how I tried to word it. I settled with, “Did you ever go hunting after he left?”
“It was all too tied in with him,” he said, sounding resigned. Did someone ever get over losing their dad, no matter how he was lost? “Even if I’d been in an okay headspace about it, our mom got sick, and …”
“Adulthood came fast.”
“I was cooking and cleaning, taking her to appointments, making sure the laundry got done and the bills were paid. Escaping to the woods wasn’t within the realm of possibility.”
“Is that when you dropped out of school?”
His hands stilled on his rope, his gaze darting to the cameras. I’d completely forgotten we were being filmed. The idea was sobering. What else might I say or do, forgetting that people could be watching this?
“Haydn needed to work full time to afford everything, and Jules was too young to legally drop out.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but the fact that he would sacrifice so much for his family? Not a surprise, but so massive it was hard to comprehend the size of it. “What sounds good for lunch?” he asked, and I knew we were done with the subject for a while.
“A huge, steaming baked potato with salt and butter and sour cream.” My stomach growled.
“How about … berries?”
Any more berries, and I was going to become close and personal acquaintances with the log that was doubling as a toilet seat, and which I had dubbed my Log Loo. “There’s some edible greenery out here. I’ll fish for a bit, and if we don’t get anything, I’ll go foraging.”
We split up, me heading toward the water, and Bennett into the forest. I hunted for a spot where I hoped there’d be goodfishing. I’d dug up some grubs on the way to the lake, so I slid one onto the hook and launched it into the water.
Fishing gave my mind plenty of time to wander. Out here, with the wide expanse of space all around me, a bald eagle soaring over my head, and the lazy lap of ever-moving water hitting the rocks at my feet, my problems appeared small. Manageable.
I flipped through each one like they were bills on my mom’s counter—unpleasant, adding up to potential disaster, but also a small part of what made up the whole of our lives.
Greg and I weren’t together anymore. Flip.
Greg accused me of being hard to love. Flip.
I was not going to be Charlotte Miller. Not going to live in a house on the hill. Not marry the boy I’d been with since middle school. Flip. Flip. Flip.
Who was I without Greg?
So many parts of me had rearranged and molded to fit into Greg’s life. Instead of speaking, I’d listened when we were out to dinner with his work friends. No one liked someone who talked too much.
Instead of beaming with pride at every animal I rescued, my joy was tinged with shame, knowing Greg would be upset if he found out.
I minimized anything that wasn’t reflective of the kind of womantheGreg Miller, from the rich family on the hill, would be with.
I’d squeezed myself into the cracks of Greg’s dreams, believing it didn’t matter because it would lead me to the biggest dream of all—belonging.
My emotion overflowed, the salty water streaming down my cheeks expelling my hopes and expectations for the future I’d planned so carefully. I didn’t know what my new future would look like. I had no contingency plans.
