The girl’s favorite place is the lake behind the house (she dreams of it every night, wondering if it loves her as much as she loves it), and it’s the same place she insists on dragging dear, sweet Janie to, despite her friend’s cries about dragging, tripping feet, and beloved boots lost to muddy puddles.
She plays by the water with Janie every day except Sunday—the Lord’s Day—but this Sunday, she’s released to her games while her parents hover over the couch, wringing their hands and glancing with wild, sunken eyes toward the girl as she prances alongside the water’s edge.
In a week they will move out of their house, far away from the lake-pond, and the poor girl won’t remember why they moved away until she’s in her forties and asks her mom whatever happened to that lake? And her aging mother will give her a look like grief and regret and exhaustion all wrapped in the same shrinking smile.
She won’t remember the funeral (even though her father gently tries to remind her of it over the phone some nights), and she won’t remember the last day she played with Janie—but if she did, she would know it was a weekend in April, after a rainstorm.
And she won’t remember whose face was staring back from the water the day she said goodbye: hers, or that of a girl forever falling behind.
About The Author: Amber Budd graduates from Lindenwood University in May ’25 with a Creative Writing BA and will begin her Creative Writing MFA in the following fall. She lives with her three cats, who serve as her live-in beta readers. You can follow her blog and read about her other publications on her website amberbuddauthor.com.
You can read our interview with Amber here.
Bill Geblato's Lotto Gelato Grotto 
One Reply to “”