Page 26 of Dirty Fighter

Rowan

The easy smile pasted on my face falters as Jason closes in, a sense of purpose in his eyes I don’t understand but can’t look away from.

Then he’s in front of me with that big body eating up all the air in the room. He reaches… past me?

“’Scuse me,” he says, sliding the drawer open as I shift to my left.

I gasp. “Is that… the list?”

Surprised, Jason holds up a piece of Stanvic family history more special even than the mailbox. “You know about this?”

It’s a well-worn notepad, spiral-bound at the top, five-by-eight ruled pages with a vertical line down the center and a pencil tied with a length of twine to the wire.

“Ed told me about these. The lists. A log from each visit each year, documenting all the repairs and maintenance. All the significant events.” And as of closing the cabin up last fall, this notepad was going on year number seven.

“I’ve been low-key avoiding this since I arrived,” he says, setting it on the counter between us. “If Dad was here, there’d be no end to the shit he’d be giving me over the fact that this year’s list isn’t even started.”

Meeting his eyes, I lift a shoulder. “He’d understand. You’ve had a few things going on.”

The notepad is open to the same page they left off last summer, with the parting note from Ed written beneath the list of repairs and maintenance.

Love ya, kid, but next year, you’re clearing the shed.

“Oh, Jason.” The impulse to step closer and hug him is strong, but better judgment wins out.

“Dad thought he’d be here to heckle me as I faced whatever vermin had moved into the shed over the winter, the way I did last summer when he found the nest of raccoons.”

“He told me about that. He laughed that big, booming laugh of his,” making me feel like I was part of the adventure instead of outside of it. “And then said what he always said…”

Jason and I speak in unison. “Cabin life.”

He shakes his head with a weighted smile. “Dad must have talked your ear off.”

“Only because I loved hearing about his trips up here. Used to pepper him with questions every time he came home. More often than that.”

A beat passes, and there’s something in Jason’s eyes. “So why is it that in all the years, you never made it out here before this?”

I thought I would. I thought⁠—

“Timing.” It’s a dodgy non-answer, but it doesn’t matter what I thought. Only that it didn’t happen. I missed my chance. And now it’s too late. “But now that I am here, what do you say we get started?”

“We?” Jason stares at me like my offer to help doesn’t compute.

“Why not? If neither of us is leaving, we might as well make a dent in the epic opening-the-cabin list, right?”

Maybe it’s weird. But this is as close to being a part of something I desperately hoped I would experience with Ed one day as I will get. And even if I missed my chance to have him show me the island that had been his favorite place for his entire life, his son showing me is the next best thing.

Jason can say no, but instead, he braces one forearm on the counter to lean over the notepad and twirls the pencil in his free hand.

“You sure? This could get messy.”

My heart skips, and the only thing I’m not sure of is if I’ll be able to keep my grin from revealing just how much this means to me.

But maybe I don’t have to. I’ve spent so much of my life watching every word I say, every look, laugh, and micro-expression. Always worrying about giving something away that might expose a vulnerability that could be used against me, or worse, inadvertently exposing someone else’s.

I’m not a kid anymore.

There is no more leverage.