Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

“You seem pretty relaxed yourself.” My arms worked back and forth across the surface of the lake. She shook her head. “Dancing and singing is all about working your ass off so that people think you just roll out of bed dancing and singing. I mean, acting is like that too, but it’s less physical for the most part.”

Emily was eight and Maisie was six and Nell was four, the big girls were in school all day and Nell came home from preschool after lunch. The sweetness of those hours when it was just the two of us never left. What would life have been without Nell? Who would Emily and Maisie have confided in once they were grown? We had a younger sister.

But he was teaching you a lesson you’d be wise to learn: you can’t save them that won’t save themselves.”

He had vomited and I had fallen and in just a minute, everything would be fine. A minute, a minute, a minute. I could feel Pallace shifting beneath my arm. “Let’s put her down,” she said to Sebastian.

as far as Michigan if I told her I needed her.

At first glance a person would have thought it was Duke who ruled the orbit, with Sebastian

fix a tractor he didn’t know how to fix, and I felt like the children would eat me. Nell was eating me, still at my breast, and the other two rushed to crawl in my lap whenever I sat down. I thought, Joe will come home and find the three of them framing out a playhouse with my bones.

“It was such a good day,” he said. “The day I was here. Someone told me years ago that I should always have a place in my mind where I could imagine myself happy, so that when I wasn’t so happy I could go there. Anyway, this is the place I go.”

But everything was weird, everything but me and Sebastian in the car, the lights of Connecticut shooting past us. We had chosen not to make a hard thing harder, which made it slightly easier when I counted up the days six weeks later and realized that my luck had run out. I still had enough money in my savings account left over from when I made actual money. I didn’t have to call anyone. I didn’t have to ask anyone for permission or help. A nurse stood beside me and held my hand and I’m here to tell you, I felt nothing but grateful. There was always going to be a part of the story I didn’t tell Joe or the girls. What I did was mine alone to do. I tore the page from the calendar and threw it away. 21

“Duke loved it here,” Sebastian says, looking out over the trees. “He was always talking about the day we all came out and had lunch with Joe’s aunt and uncle. The place hasn’t changed.”

“I was and then I very much was not.” “Which doesn’t answer my question.” “Was I in love with Sebastian?” “The better brother.” The better brother, indeed, but I was young, and it was years before I could see the merits of kindness. “No,”