Emory’s Gift Read Free Page B

heart sank with it.
    “Charlie?” he said, his tone puzzled.
    I drew in a breath. My fists clenched the gun cabinet key in my hand, its tiny teeth digging into my palm.
    “Charlie? You’re not ready?”
    I blinked at this, unsure.
    “Get a move on. It’s Saturday; did you forget what day it was?”
    Truthfully, I had. It was summer vacation, and I had lost all sense of the calendar. Saturdays my father took me to the YMCA for junior-lifesaver training. I was supposed to be wearing my bathing suit.
    “Oh!” I could have laughed with relief. I ran down the hall, stealthily replaced his key, then tiptoed back to my bedroom and slipped into my trunks and grabbed a towel. He was already back out in the driveway when I emerged from my bedroom and skipped past the gun cabinet, giving the rifles a parting glance.
    Dad started the Jeep as I slid in. He backed out of the driveway and we bumped along in silence.
    The air was so clear it seemed to shine as the Jeep rattled down the curvy, rutted road. I looked out at the perfect day and tried to think of something to say to my father.
    The county road snaked along next to the river, Dad’s thickly treaded tires buzzing on the pavement. When we first moved to Selkirk River five years ago, I noticed the quick transition from utter wilderness to town, a sudden clutch of buildings jumping up from the riverbank as if in surprise. It was like, I told my mom, a house here and a house there got together and said, Well hey, we might as well have a town while we’re at it!
    Selkirk River put everything it had into about five square blocks and then seemed to lose ambition. Downriver the homes and occasional stores continued a ways, and the shop where my dad’s employer turned out customized furniture parts was another couple of miles in that direction, but after that there was nothing to the south until you got to the city of Sandpoint. Up north there were only mountains and Canada, both seeming to stretch forever.
    My dad wheeled into the parking lot of the YMCA, turned off the Jeep, and then twisted in his seat to look at me. I felt a rising, unspecified guilt and cast about for something to attach it to. Could he know about the rifle?
    “I need to talk to you, Charlie.”
    “Yessir.” I swallowed.
    “It’s about where I was this morning. Do you remember me telling you I had business to take care of?”
    He’d never told me that. I could recall with absolute clarity everything my father had said to me the past month, the past two months, maybe even stretching all the way back to Mom’s funeral, because he spoke so seldom now. I wondered if this meant he was talking to me in his head, like I often did with him, and that he was confused over what was real and what he had imagined.
    “I don’t remember that.”
    He thought about it. “I guess I meant to. Charlie, I’ve decided to go into business with Rod; you know Rod Shelburton, has that ranch where we all rode horses a couple times? Him.”
    Dad was watching me intently. I tried to understand what sort of reaction was expected of me. “Okay,” I finally said.
    “The thing is, I’m investing some money with him. What’s left from your mom’s life insurance after we paid off the medical bills. You understand? So it’s like it’s not just my money. It’s our money, Charlie, yours and mine both. So in a way, I’m investing for the both of us.” With that, he stuck out his hand like we were closing a business transaction.
    I guess I’d known there was some money after my mother died, but I never thought of myself as having any claim to it. I gripped Dad’s hand and shook it, baffled.
    “Okay then. You have a good time in Lifesaving.”
    I was dismissed. Still a bit unclear, I swung out of the Jeep and headed toward the building. I heard the Jeep start up behind me but didn’t turn around to wave, because I hated when I did that and my dad wasn’t looking at me to wave back. My hand would just hang there in the air,