Free Osprey Island by Thisbe Nissen

though you’re lying.”
    “Nothing new,” he said, dejected. “You’re nothing new, sweetheart. That’s nothing, nothing, nothing new to me in the world.”
    “Hmm,” Brigid said again. “Why’s that?”
    “Why’s what?”
    “Why’s it you always look as though you’re lying?”
    “Couldn’t tell you.” He pouted out his lower lip and shook his head slowly.
    “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” she asked, but all he did was laugh.
    “You wouldn’t believe I was telling the truth anyway, would you?”
    Now she laughed. “You claim you’ll not cheat on your wife,” she repeated, a detective taking inventory of the facts. “Yet you look on me as though you surely would . . .” It was not something she’d have said sober, and she knew it. Her ego was talking, nursing bruises.
    Lance laughed uncomfortably. “Just wishing . . .”
    “Wishing, are you?”
    “Wishing,” he said, “wishing things were different . . . that everything was different . . .” he trailed off, then snapped back to attention. “You’re a nice girl,” he told her. “You’re a real nice girl.”
    “I’m not
all
that nice of a girl,” she corrected him.
    “Oh, you’re a nice girl . . . You don’t even know how nice of a girl you are.”
    “If you’d be so kind as to tell that to the fucking college boy . . .”
    He raised his glass. “To the fucking college boy.”
    “To fucking the college boy, cheers,” she said, and he laughed, and they clinked and drank.
    A car came up the beach road, its headlights cutting the night between water and Lodge. It slowed and turned into the Lodge’s driveway. Headlights disappeared, doors slammed. Brigid and Lance looked to the stairs. Peg was herding the kids, who stumbled before her as if they’d been awoken from sleep. When Peg looked up and saw Brigid, she started. Then her gaze fell to Lance and she froze, disapproval washing across her face. “Hel—hello.”
    Lance’s eyes went to Squee, nearly asleep on his feet, and everything about Lance changed. The fuddled man drinking with Brigid on the porch receded, his confusion replaced by anger. He addressed his son. “Where the hell do you think you’ve been?”
    Peg’s jaw set firmly. “We’ve taken the children for an ice cream,” she said, a thousand curses held under her tongue, which she’d never speak aloud. Even to Lance Squire.
    “Your mother’s probably worried sick,” Lance accused Squee. He didn’t so much as acknowledge Peg’s presence. Jeremy stood by ineffectually. Lance said to Squee: “You didn’t even think about telling your mother where you were at, now, did you?”
    “My mom said it was OK,” said Mia, who was standing beside Squee looking spooked, as if she’d had a bad dream and couldn’t shake the fear.
    Lance fixed his stare on the little girl. “Did I
ask
what your mother said?”
    No tears came to Mia’s eyes just then, though they were surely only delayed by shock.
    “You get home,” Lance told Squee.
“Now.”
    No one moved. Then Peg spoke, finding her voice before the rest of them. It seemed likely that Jeremy might never speak again. Peg looked to her dumbstruck beau, her tone leveled by fury. “Take Mia to her mother, won’t you?” she said. “I’ll walk Squee up the hill.” And she turned without waiting for Jeremy’s response, touched Mia’s shoulder by way of good night, pivoted Squee around with her other hand, and led him away from the porch without another word.
    There was no one in the cabin when Squee got there. He looked out the window and watched Peg walk away toward the staff house. Then he went to his room, prying off his sneakers and stepping out of them as he walked. They made a little trail to his bedroom door, which he closed firmly and locked. In his clothes, which were dirty and sweaty from a day of work outside, his hands and chin sticky with Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Squee climbed into his unmade bed, pulled the covers over him, and shut his eyes so