Eden Lake by Jane Roper

Author:Jane Roper [Roper, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby

Abe

On the second Saturday of the session, on his way back to the farmhouse to change for dinner after a swim, Abe stopped into the office with plans to rib Aura about the inspector’s failure to appear. He had played along with her hunch, double-checking safety equipment and signage at the “high risk” areas she enumerated for him—waterfront, ropes course, climbing wall, riding area—but only in a half-assed way. Everything was fine, and if there was a minor infraction he was confident he could talk his way out of it. They wouldn’t shut the place down. But “they” never showed.

Aura was just ending a phone call when Abe came in. After hanging up, she stared at him evenly for a moment, then shook her head. “You are unbelievable. Do you know that?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, flexing a bicep. He was wearing nothing but his swim trunks, his towel slung around his neck. “You’re actually not the first woman to say so.”

At some point—Abe wasn’t sure quite when—their banter had taken on this slightly flirtatious tone. He’d started it, he supposed. And it wasn’t like he meant anything by it; she was practically his sister. It just seemed to be the most effective way to defuse the tension between them. It flustered (maybe flattered?) her enough that she’d relax a little about whatever it was that she was annoyed at him for at the moment—not writing it down when he took petty cash, not returning a phone call fast enough, leaving half-full mugs of coffee on the collating table next to the copy machine. And then he would feel guilty (there was something unsavory about deploying flirtation so strategically) and relent a little, and they’d find something resembling a middle ground.

This time Aura just glared. “That was Dahna Schwartz’s mother.”

“Oh?” Dahna from Free Speech. Blowjob Dahna. Shit, Abe thought. Shit, shit, shit.

“She just wanted to thank us,” Aura said, her voice suddenly bright with sarcastic cheer, “for talking so openly and frankly with her daughter about such important contemporary issues.”

In spite of the relief flooding through him, Abe played it cool. “Yeah, great. She’s a regular at Free Speech. Good kid. That’s nice of her mom to call. I’m glad she appreciated it.”

“You explained to campers what oral sex is?” Aura whisper-shouted. “Are you crazy?”

“I explained it in very innocuous terms. Most of them already knew what it was anyway, I’m sure. How could they not? It’s all over the news.”

“Abe, you cannot talk about stuff like that with campers! What else did you tell them? How to roll a joint?”

“That was the only day we talked about anything controversial. And afterward, I realized it probably wasn’t the best idea. But the girl’s mother is happy, so what’s the big deal?”

“Her mother sounds like a nut job,” Aura said, sitting back in her chair. “Let’s just hope none of the more normal parents get wind of this and sue us for psychological damage.”

“Let them try. If I’m going to run this place, I’m not going to run it tiptoeing around a bunch of hysterical, overprotective parents.

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