The Boathouse

I had always come to the boathouse in the summers when I was a child. I could remember the sun on my skin, the salt that lingered in the air, and the way the boat seemed to rock in sync with my thoughts. The dock itself looked dark and uninviting—almost as if it were taunting me for coming back. I wanted to throw up.

It was the first summer since my grandpa had died, and the boathouse seemed to still with that reality. I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t want to be reminded.

After I moved away, I avoided this place like the plague. I made excuses when my family invited me back. I didn’t have the heart to face it, or them. To come back to the place where I had first lost myself. The place where I had been robbed of my innocence.

I left as soon as I turned eighteen. Back then, I needed nothing more than distance. To be far from here, far from what had happened inside this boathouse when I was fifteen.

I could still remember the look on my parents’ faces the day I told them I was leaving. It had been branded into my memory, stuck on replay. It had hurt my mom the worst, I thought.

I stood in front of the door, the latch just within reach. My hand was shaking. My heart pounded in my ears. I knew once I stepped through that door, the memory would come flooding back, just like the tides I used to play in.

There wasn’t really a choice. My mom had assigned this as my job: check out the boathouse, pack things up, put it up for sale. I couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know what happened. I never told her.

My hand finally reached the doorknob, and I pushed it open. The smell of mold and dust hit me immediately. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. For a moment, I was taken back to that night.

Forcing the memory back down into the small, tight box I had kept it in all these years, I stepped inside. The floor creaked under my weight. Though he had passed recently, it felt like this place had been abandoned long ago. It made me wonder when my family had been here last.

Everything was still, as if frozen in time. Fishing poles, life jackets, and blankets lay the same way they had when I left. I wondered.. did my family stop coming back because of it? Did they know? I shook my head. There wasn’t room for that kind of thinking. I hadn’t spoken to them in years. Even when I tried, the words never seemed to come out quite right. It seemed as though I was hiding from something, which my mom had pointed out many times. She was right.

I had only agreed to come because my mom said everyone else refused. My siblings, my dad; none of them wanted to be reminded of his death. I said yes, knowing I would be reminded of mine. I regretted it now.

My boyfriend had offered to come with me, or in my place, but I couldn’t imagine him in the room where it happened. The part of my past that left me broken mixing with the present that helped me feel whole. I turned him down, telling him that I didn’t need his help, that I would be okay on my own. Perhaps I had been too brave when I said that.

As I stepped further in, the room started to feel smaller. My breath hitched in my throat. I wanted to leave, to close the door and never return. To leave it all behind again.

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stay steady. I sat down on the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. My therapist had told me to do this whenever I felt a panic attack coming on.

Time seemed to stop. I could hear the waves lapping against the dock, the birds flying somewhere above me. I couldn’t stop what was coming.

He was a family friend. My brother’s best friend. His dad had known mine all their lives. He was my first kiss. It was that one Fourth of July, late at night, after everyone else had gone to sleep. We’d snuck some alcohol from my father’s cabinet and shared it, kissing in between sips.

He wanted more. I didn’t. I wasn’t ready.

He left the next morning and never came back. I liked to imagine the guilt had gotten to him—that maybe that was why he couldn’t face me after. It was the only way I could live with it. Imagining that he cared, or thought about what he had done at all.

I sucked in a sharp breath. The tears had half-dried on my cheeks. My head was full of pressure. Standing, I brushed off my jeans. Everything was covered in dust, cobwebs, fragments of a life that no one wanted to touch.

I pulled out my phone and called my mom. She answered on the first ring, her voice full of worry.

“I’m fine,” I told her, though we both knew I wasn’t. She could hear it in my voice; the cracks, the breath I couldn’t quite catch.

I told her I couldn’t stay to pack the boathouse. That I’d pay for a mover to handle it instead, and that I was sorry something else she hadn’t asked for had become her responsibility again.

She didn’t argue. She said she couldn’t bring herself to come down here either. That there was something sad inside of it.

Her words made my chest tighten. Tears pricked at the edges of my eyes, and I swallowed hard.

“I love you. I’ll talk to you soon,” I said softly.

“I love you too,” she said.

Then I hung up. We both knew the last part wasn’t true.

Outside, the tide was coming in.

I left before it reached the dock.