Page 76 of Thin Ice

He stood beside me and looked at the road. "When did Noah say they'd be here?"

"Eleven."

He checked his phone. Ten fifty-five.

Then I heard it, Noahs broken muffler down the road.

"They're here."

"How do you know?"

"The sound of poor college kids."

I paused.

Alex laughed. "I hear it."

I put my arm around his shoulders. He leaned in. We stood there on the porch watching the empty lake road, and I could feel the excitement in him, and it made me happy. With everything that was going on, Alex needed this distraction, and so did I.

Noah's green Subaru pulled into the driveway.

The car stopped, and both doors opened at once, and Noah was out first, stretching his back, squinting at the lake.

"Captain Moore." He spread his arms. "Two years I've been hearing about this lake. Two years."

"And?"

"It's not a pond."

"I told you it's not a pond."

"I know you told me. I just assumed you were being sentimental." He grabbed me and hugged me, hard, committed, no distance. Then held me at arm's length and looked at my face the way he looked at everything — like he was filing the information somewhere specific. "You look different. Relaxed. That's suspicious."

Priya came around the car already talking. "— because the GPS said left, and he said right and then we were at a boat launch watching a man on the ice stare at us, so." She had two bags and a Trader Joe's tote. She hugged me — quick, efficient, warm. "Liam. Finally."

"How was the drive?"

"Four hours. Noah narrated the last forty minutes like a nature documentary. I have a headache."

"I was setting the scene."

"You were describing trees."

"Trees are the scene, Priya."

She looked past me at the lake and the house and the dock, and the stripped trees along the shore. Her glasses were slightly crooked. She pushed them up with one finger, and I watched her take it all in.

"Good," she said. Not to me. To the lake, maybe. Then she picked up her bags and walked inside.

***

Ethan and Remy pulled in forty minutes later. A black Mazda that Ethan drove, Remy in the passenger seat with his shoes off and his feet on the dash, earbuds around his neck.

Remy got out first. Took his time. Stood in the gravel and looked at the lake the way he looked at a race course before the start. He was so observant; I was sure he was looking at where the ice was thick, where the shore bent, where the wind came from. I'd seen him do this a hundred times in the boat. His brain ran spatial calculations the way other people breathed.

"Moore." We did the handshake-pull, half hug. His grip always surprised me.

"You made it."