Chapter 9 - The Simple Feast
A few minutes later, Dad stood up, brushing off his trousers. "Wait here for just a second. Don't move."
Before I could ask what he was planning, he jogged back up the path toward the parking lot. I sat in the quiet stillness of the dock, listening to the soft lapping of the water against the wooden pylons and the distant call of a red-winged blackbird hiding in the reeds. The air smelled of damp earth, pine needles, and approaching evening.
True to his word, Dad reappeared ten minutes later carrying two large, grease-stained paper bags from the old diner down the highway—the same roadside diner we used to visit every Friday night before he met Vanessa, back when life was messy, loud, and entirely uncurated.
He sat down beside me on the wooden planks and pulled out two massive cardboard cartons filled with hot, golden french fries dusted generously with sea salt and vinegar.
"They didn't have much," Dad said, smiling sheepishly as he handed me a cardboard boat piled high with fries. "But I figured high-end hors d'oeuvres were a little overrated anyway."
I laughed, a real, unburdened sound that drifted across the open water. I took a hot fry, the salt stinging my scraped palms just a fraction, reminding me of the price of survival, but the taste was pure comfort.
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"Way overrated," I agreed.
We sat side by side on the wooden dock, eating greasy diner food out of paper cartons as the sun dipped below the tree line, painting the lake in gold and copper. There were no cameras clicking in the bushes, no wedding coordinators checking clipboards, and no impossible aesthetic standards to uphold.
