The Last Night

By the time Amanda and Ben returned to camp, the sun was dropping behind the trees. The BMW looked even more ridiculous than usual with Ben’s bicycle sticking awkwardly out of the trunk, the rear lid tied down with a piece of rope they had found in the truck.

Amanda glanced at it as they pulled into the camp parking lot.

“You should get a bike rack.”

Ben looked at the bicycle.

“I think that would require a redesign.”

Amanda smiled.

“I don’t think this is the right equipment for the job.”

“Finally,” he said. “You’re learning.”

They barely had time to unpack before the closing bonfire demanded their attention. The microphone stopped working. Someone had misplaced half the chairs. A counselor discovered that the firewood had been stacked on the wrong side of the lake. The fireworks crew arrived early. One of the canoes had somehow become part of the seating arrangement.

None of it went according to plan.

Amanda didn’t care.

She and Ben moved through the problems together, improvising instead of controlling, adapting instead of correcting. When something went wrong, they looked at each other, laughed, and found another way. Amanda realized she was enjoying the uncertainty. The old Amanda would have considered that a process failure.

This Amanda considered it a summer.

By sunset, everything was ready.

The campers gathered around the fire. Counselors sang songs they had sung every summer for decades. Deb told stories about campers from years before. Sal tried to make a speech and became emotional halfway through it. The fire crackled against the dark Maine sky while the lake reflected the last orange light of the day.

Amanda and Ben stood at the back of the crowd, mostly hidden from view.

The invisible hands of the camp.

They watched everything they had helped create.

Ben reached for her hand.

Amanda took it.

They stayed that way through the entire ceremony.

Eventually the campers were sent to their cabins for their final night. The camp grew quiet again, almost as quiet as it had been when Amanda first arrived.

Deb found them near the waterfront.

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything. I don’t know what we’d have done without you two.”

Amanda smiled.

Deb looked between them.

“So what’s next?”

Amanda looked at Ben.

Ben looked at Amanda.

For the first time in her adult life, she didn’t have a five-year plan, a career objective, a performance metric or a contingency strategy waiting in a folder somewhere.

She smiled.

“I don’t know.”

Deb raised an eyebrow.

Amanda shrugged.

“I don’t have a plan.”

Ben grinned.

“That’s progress.”

Deb laughed. “Well, we need someone to lead the camp shutdown. Cabins, boats, equipment, inventory. Everything has to be ready for winter.”

Amanda looked at Ben.

Ben looked at Amanda.

“Perfect,” he said. “That gives us time to plan our business.”

Amanda laughed.

Deb shook her head.

“So Ben is planning, and Amanda is flying wherever the wind takes her?”

Amanda looked out across the lake.

The breeze moved through the trees.

She smiled.

“Sounds about right.”

Deb put an arm around both of them.

“Sounds like you had a summer in Maine.”

They stood together beside the lake as the last light disappeared.

For once, Amanda didn’t know what came next.

And for once, she couldn’t wait to find out.