The Lake Season by Hannah McKinnon Page A

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    Monday morning found them in the driveway, exchanging good-bye hugs. Stephen had to catch a flight back to Seattle for work. Leah was staying behind to work on the wedding.
    â€œJust like the old days!” Bill declared wistfully. “Both my girls back home.”
    Millie eyed Iris evenly, her expression more strategic than emotional. “It will give you kids a chance to finally catch up.”
    Iris wasn’t so sure. This was her time to sort through her own issues, not flower arrangements.
    But it was Stephen who had finally cajoled her. “Keep an eye on this one for me, will you? She’s a troublemaker,” he said, pulling Iris into a firm hug. His hair was still damp from his shower, his polo shirt crisp. Iris breathed in. How lucky Leah was.
    As Bill’s BMW pulled away, Leah was the last one standing in the driveway, waving tearfully. Just as she had when they were little and their parents left them home with a babysitter.
    â€œDoes she always get this upset when he travels?” Iris asked. She and Millie stood watching from the porch.
    â€œThey’re in love, Iris.”
    But it was more than that. Leah’s heightened responses to all things had always confused Iris: the boundless hysteria when Leah found out she got her favorite teacher for an upcoming school year, followed by her bedridden week of uninterrupted weeping the time Bill found a dead baby bird along the driveway. Responses that initially left the family exchanging loaded glances, but soon after swept them along unwittingly, each mimicking Leah’s brand of reply: finding Millie, herself, foolishly dancing around the kitchen as Leah brandished the back-to-school letter. Or Bill hovering outside her bedroom door, with a little stuffed toy bird in his palm. Had it been Iris languishing in bed, she was pretty sure her mother would have pulled her out, brushed her teeth, and marched her right down to the bus stop, telling her to get on with things.
    Now Millie fingered her pearl necklace, watching her younger daughter uneasily. “Which is why we’ll need to keep her busy. With the wedding, the farm, that sort of stuff.”
    â€œOr else, what?” Iris wondered aloud.
    â€œShe’s sensitive, Iris,” Millie said. “You know that.”
    Iris stiffened. Then, with an impending divorce, what did that make her? Leah was approaching them now. Millie rearranged her expression and called to her cheerfully, “I’m sure he’ll call you from the airport, dear. Why don’t we have some tea on the patio and go over the seating charts?”
    Leah nodded glumly, looking more crushed than she should have for a bride who’d be seeing her groom in another week. Stephen traveled all the time, after all. And besides, they were about to be married.
    When Bill returned from the airport, Leah’s mood hadn’t improved. She’d taken a tearful call from Stephen in the locked den and emerged with red eyes. She even refused Millie’s offer to go check on the farm stand, something she’d claimed to be looking forward to all weekend. Instead, for the remainder of the cloudless summer day, Leah took to her room.
    â€œShe’s probably just tired,” Millie sympathized. But still, the family hovered, wandering the farmhouse like some misguided fleet who’d fallen off course, circling from room to room, the energy not unlike that of a coming summer storm. Iris felt aimless, too. Cooper had mentioned the evening before that he’d be working on another project across town. As she eyed the barn outside, she wondered if she was craving more the work in the barn or the company. Even her mother was fidgety, riffling through kitchen cabinets in search of a zucchini bread recipe she could not find, leaving a wake of ingredients strewn across the kitchen island that she never bothered to put away.
    After an