Summer's End by Kathleen Gilles Seidel Page B

I can’t get in touch with them. There’s no way to let them know that I’m coming, what flight I am on, all that.”
    â€œThen don’t let them know. Just show up. Rent a car at the airport and drive yourself there. You’re a grown woman. You can do that.”
    â€œNo, I can’t.” When it came to Amy’s family, she was most emphatically not a grown woman. “You just said it. I am the little sister. Little sisters don’t rent cars and drive themselves anywhere.”
    â€œThat’s if they want to go on being the little sister their whole lives.”
    â€œYou haven’t met Phoebe and Ian. Being the little sister is the only option.”
    Gretchen was listening to this without much interest. She had heard it all before. “If you really want to go, Amy, I’ll figure out some way to notify your family.”
    â€œThere’re no phones there.”
    Gretchen waved a hand. Phones, schmones. Like many skaters, Henry, Tommy, and Amy did not have particularly good problem-solving skills. She did. That’s what they paid her for. “You finish on the ice, and I’ll see what I can do.”
    Twenty minutes later, she reported back. The receptionist of the area Chamber of Commerce had a teenage son, and yes, of course he would be happy to drive out to this lake with a message for Amy’s family. “I don’t suppose you know the fire number of your cabin, do you?” Gretchen asked. “That’s apparently what they use instead of addresses.”
    Gretchen now knew more about navigation in the region than Amy did. “I’m clueless.”
    â€œThat’s okay. She says he’ll find it.”
    So Amy was going to the lake. And Amy did not like the lake. She hoisted her skate bag by the strap and hung it over Tommy’s shoulder. If he was making her do this, he could at least work a bit.
    He hooked his thumb through the strap. “You can call me every day. I’ll listen to you moan.”
    â€œThere’re no phones up there, Tommy. Remember?”
    â€œOh.”
    They started walking to the exit, where a car would be waiting to take them back to the skaters’ hotel. “How can there be no phones?” he asked. “Everyone has phones.”
    â€œThere just aren’t.”
    Â 
    Knowing that both Mom and Holly would, at best, scalp him if he disobeyed, Jack didn’t include a generator when he packed his truck. He was sorry. It wasn’t that he cared whether or not he had electricity, but he had no idea what he was going to do with himself at this lake. Water sports weren’t his thing, and he wasn’t any good at lazing around doing nothing—but a couple of two-hundred-foot boxes of Romex wire would liven up anyone’s day.
    He was driving up from Kentucky. Hal had suggestedthat he could fly to Minneapolis and then change for a little commuter flight that would take him to a one-room airport within an hour of the lake. But Jack preferred to drive. He liked to drive, and as his sister frequently pointed out, he was an American male—he didn’t feel complete without a set of car keys in his pocket.
    Holly decided to skip the commuter plane too. He would pick her at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and they would drive the rest of the way together. The lake was about five hours north of the Twin Cities.
    He arrived in plenty of time—owing in part to the fact that Iowa State Highway patrol were not showing their cheery little faces along their stretch of Interstate 80. He spent the morning poking around the Twin Cities—there was a great salvage place in St. Paul called the Ax Man. Just after lunch he went out to the airport and parked in the short-term lot. He didn’t usually pay higher rates to save himself a few steps, but Holly could get herself out of an airport faster than anyone he knew. She was always one of the first people off the plane, and she never