The Last Cable Across the Lake

Margaret watched the young technician from her window, his van parked where old man Miller's barn once stood. They were installing cable, something she'd resisted for seventy-eight years.

'You'll finally see the world, Grandma,' her granddaughter had insisted. Margaret had smiled. At her age, she preferred the world she carried inside.

The afternoon heat reminded her of July 1947, the summer she and Eleanor turned twelve. They'd already planned their lives: they'd marry brothers and live in houses joined by a porch. They'd never be apart.

That July, a lightning storm swept across Lake Como while they swam to the island. Margaret remembered the water glowing silver around them, each flash illuminating Eleanor's pale face, both girls laughing at their own foolishness until the thunder shook their bones.

They'd taken shelter in the old boathouse, shivering in their wet dresses. That's when they found the cable—the thick rusted line that once pulled the ferry across the lake. Beneath a sky still flickering with lightning, they'd grasped that cable and hauled themselves hand over hand through the dark water, Eleanor singing to keep courage, Margaret gripping her friend's shoulder with her free hand.

They reached shore soaked, freezing, and more alive than they'd ever been. They slept curled together in Eleanor's bed, dogs at their feet, while rain hammered the roof.

Eleanor was gone now fifteen years. The porch they'd dreamed about never happened. Life took them to different states, different husbands, different griefs. But that summer—that moment hand over hand through the dark water—had remained the truest thing Margaret ever knew.

The technician knocked on her door. 'All set, ma'am.'

Margaret thanked him and sat by her window, watching the evening light settle over the lake. She'd turn on the television tomorrow. But tonight she would remember instead: the copper taste of storm air, a friend's hand slick with water, the cable that pulled them both through darkness, and the dogs waiting faithfully on shore for two girls who thought they were immortal.