“Did you two lovebirds have a good night?” Margret asks, bumping into her brother with a saucy smile pointed in my direction, and I shake my head, watching her laugh.
“Leave your brother and Everly alone and get plates down so we can eat,” Janet orders, carrying Taylor to Dave, who places her on his lap and hands her a piece of bacon off a plate in the middle of the counter.
“You’re no fun.” Margret sighs, and Janet rolls her eyes at her daughter.
“Can I help with anything?” I ask.
“You can pour coffee for everyone,” Janet tells me, and I get up and walk around the island into the kitchen, pausing when Blake stops me to kiss my temple, which makes Margret sigh dreamily this time.
“You should take Everly out in one of the canoes today, and I’ll watch Sam for you two,” Janet says as I begin to pour coffee into the mugs I pulled down from the cabinet, and I glance over my shoulder at Blake.
“Everly doesn’t really love outdoorsy stuff.”
“You’ll love it,” Janet tells me as I finish off the last of the coffee. “There’s nothing better than being out in the middle of the lake, surrounded by quiet.”
“I don’t know.”
“It’ll be fun,” Blake assures me with a smile.
“All right.” I give in, hoping I don’t regret it.
“It’s pretty out here.” I carefully glance around, my life jacket and my grip on the canoe preventing me from moving too much.
“I’d be more inclined to believe you, baby, if your knuckles weren’t turning white from holding on so tight.” Blake laughs, and I scrunch my nose at him.
“I felt the water. It’s not exactly warm, and I have no desire to end up in the lake.”
“You’re not going to end up in the lake.” He shakes his head at me as he rows us toward a small tree-covered island.
“Whatever,” I mutter, then look over his shoulder at the house, which is getting farther away. I see Sam and Janet on the top balcony with Margret and Taylor, with Dave nowhere in sight. “Do you think your mom knows about your dad?” I ask quietly.
“I don’t know.” His shoulders rise as he inhales a deep breath. “If she doesn’t know for sure, I think she suspects something is going on.”
“It’s difficult not to when he’s visibly lethargic.”
“There’s that,” he agrees and then stops rowing. “What would you do? Would you tell your mom if it was your dad asking you to keep his secret?”
“I want to say that I would, but honestly I don’t know if I would be strong enough to hurt my mom like that, or my dad.”
“Yeah,” he says before he starts to row once more. Then he adds quietly, “My dad took me off his contact list with his doctor.”
“What do you mean?”
“His doctor can no longer legally give me any information about my father.” His jaw twitches. “I called him yesterday before I came to pick you up, hoping he would give me an update, but he told me that he could no longer share my dad’s information with me.”
“Why would your dad do that?”
“My guess?” he asks, and I nod, even though I’m pretty sure I already know the reasons why. “He’s now trying to protect me.”
I bite my inner cheek as my nose stings, and tears fill my eyes. I hate the idea of what that means for Dave and his family. I really hate what that might mean for Blake. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“Me too.” His expression gentles, and he leans across the space between us to wipe away the wetness from my cheeks. “No crying.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose.”
“I know you’re not.” He leans back and looks around. “Have you ever heard of the Flathead Lake Monster?”
“The what?” I wipe my face with the sleeve of my shirt and go along with him changing the subject, because he obviously doesn’t want to talk about his dad anymore.
“The Flathead Lake Monster, like the Loch Ness Monster, only here in Montana.”
“That’s not a real thing.” I roll my eyes at him.
“It is. The Kootenai tribe was said to live on an island in the middle of the lake, and one winter when they were changing camps, the lake was frozen over, so they decided to cross it. Two girls saw what they thought were large antlers sticking out of the ice and decided to cut them off. As they started to chop away at the ice to get to them, the monster’s head appeared, and then he shook, causing the ice on the lake to break up. It’s said they used magic to get away, but some of the tribe drowned.”
“You’re serious?”
“There’s been other reports since then, some even recently,” he says, and I look around, feeling totally freaked out, because I do believe that a lot of Native American folklore comes from pieces of truth.