This painting? Jacob wanted it to be the first thing my father ever hung on the walls of the cabin. “Right there,” Jacob had said, pointing at a blank stretch of pine paneling near the window. “So when he reads, he can look up and see the lake, even if the curtains are closed. It’ll be like having two lakes.”
He’d laughed at his own idea, delighted.
Jessica stood beside him, swirling her glass of pinot noir like she was hosting a tasting instead of loitering at a cramped cabin dinner table. My older sister. Thirty-three years old and still somehow the loudest presence in any room, like the world existed as background noise for her monologue.
She leaned over him, her perfume—something expensive and aggressively floral—mixing with the smell of wine and roast chicken. Her phone lay face-up on the table beside his painting, screen dark for once. Her nails were fresh, glossy red, the exact shade of the wine in her glass.
I noticed all of this in pieces, disjointed details that didn’t yet form a pattern in my mind.
Jacob looked up at her, his expression careful, hopeful. He always watched Jessica with a wary fascination, the way some children watch big dogs. Half attracted, half afraid.
“What are you working on, kid?” she asked, already bored before he answered.
“It’s the lake,” he said softly, his voice barely carrying over the murmur of conversation from the living room. “For Grandpa. For his birthday tomorrow.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes flicking down. “That.”
That. Like it was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
