MINNIE used to tell me about the whales that live in the Great Lakes. She described them as big, dark blue and white-bellied. With green, consoling eyes they sang love songs on summer mornings. In winter, she said, find them near Australia, where they migrate to escape the cold. And in history books you’ll see pictures of whalers seeking ivory like elephants. Teddy Roosevelt made that illegal. I believed her. After all we grew up inland of the peninsula's coast, among 55 miles an hour country roads, which snake between endless farm fields growing subsidized cash crops.

This story starts on a Friday in May, the last day of school. Dad and Minnie drove the black suburban up to the school pick-up zone with our bags already packed. Minnie hung out the passenger-side window cat-calling me to hurry. Her shoulder-length blond hair gleamed gold under the mid-day Sun. She stuck two fingers into her teeth whistled, then roared, “Nice shirt, oh moma!” I was wearing my black Nirvana tank top. We high-fived about it, and off we were, catching Interstate-75 perfectly before rush hour. North.

Dad lane-switched and sped while sipping boxed-wine from a plastic to-go coffee mug. “Keep your eyes peeled for deer,” he said, moping the red liquid from his mustache with his sleeve and pointing to deer grazing in a field off the highway. Minnie pulled from the glove-box a police radar bought in the 80’s, which Dad plugged into the cigarette lighter. I stared out the window watching tractors till straight lines in fields miles-long. Then I fell asleep and didn’t wake until Minnie shook my shoulder because we'd gotten to the Mackinaw Bridge. She’d climbed from sitting shotgun to the backseat, by me. “Why am I awake?” I complained, yawning. “I hate bridges.” Minnie looked at me with green, apologetic eyes, but wasn’t actually sorry. She grabbed my arm, pulled me to the middle seat and played with my hair while rubbing my back. I buckled my seatbelt.

Going 45 in the congested bridge lanes, Dad turned off Neil Young in order to concentrate. A bee blew in from the open window and buzzed by Dad’s left ear. I screamed, of course, but Minnie looked calm as always not paying attention to some bee not worth it. Her slender neck was turned towards the window waiting for gaps between cars for peeks at the edge of the bridge. It was golden before the sunset, when the light hits just so on everything it touches. I didn’t care. I wailed instead about my butt hurting from sitting too long, and I nagged with questions like “How much until we get there?” and “What’s for dinner?” The next exit we drove through a McDonald’s drive through, and Dad made us order off the dollar menu.

Hours passed, and the night was alive by the time we turned onto a gravel road winding into the coastal forest. Believe it or not, I’d fallen asleep again, and this time I woke up to Minnie’s tickling fingers. “What? Lil baby babe want her sleepy sleep?” Then she made chicken-bawk noises while going at my sides, which made my defense collapse into giggles. I punched her left boob.

“Enough of that!” Dad commanded, short-fused. “Help with the bags for heaven’s sake,” Dad pulled from the cooler the wine box, which he used to fill his coffee cup again. We swung our bags over our shoulders and made our way to the trailhead at the far end of the vacant parking lot. Hiking three miles while pointing flashlights at dirt paths carved into an old forest was not easy for the jumpy and skin-and-bones middle-school me. But I didn’t panic. I firmly resisted complaining about the fatigue that crawled up my legs like spiders. Just like Minnie, I took my turn carrying the non-Dad end of the stocked, blue cooler. Just like Minnie, I stretched my legs whenever Dad wandered off the path to pee. I stayed in stride with the sculpted legs of my elders who walk like giraffes across the Savannah.

The trail spit us onto the coast of Lake Superior on the west edge of a beach named after some Anglo-Saxon white man. We sprinted down the dune of pushed-up sand and marched down the coast, stopping beside two drift logs nicely framed around bonfire's remnants. “This good then?” Dad inquired of no one, while the clap of my bag flung from off shoulder to the sandy earth was muted by the dense blackness and crash of Lake Superior’s whitecaps. Dad pitched his tent in the dark at the base of the dune while Minnie and I shined flashlights. Then he helped us pitch closer to the Lake. Superior! Called the upper lake, a lake among lakes to be feared: deep, cold, blue, crisp, fresh, rarely iced, with an unperturbed swell and the propensity to sink even the Edmund Fitzgerald. We were on holiday.

Dad went to bed with his box of wine, and we sprawled a blanket and ourselves next to our tent over the sand by the shore for stargazing. I saw a shooting star and told Minnie. She'd missed it, but wasn't bummed. She said we'd see one again if we thought really hard about it. Then we went quiet trying to take it all in.

“Minnie,” I said after a while. “What was Mom like?” Minnie rolled onto her side, facing me. She reached her long arm to my belly and rubbed. It was unspoken that mentioning Mom was off limits especially when Dad was around. But getting older, I'd become more curious. “Dad's snoring,” I added. “He won't hear.”

“I was still pretty young,” Minnie whispered. “I remember her always laughing. You can see from pictures you have her dimples. When she'd smile, her cheeks would climb into her eyes.” Minnie sat up and began drawing circles in the soft sand while she spoke. “I remember her blue, frilled dresses and the smell of banana bread in the kitchen. On Sunday mornings before church she'd brew dark coffee and sing the Beatles.” I couldn't remember the last time we'd gone to church. The idea of church made me feel embarrassed. Grandpa—Mom’s Dad, had been a pastor. He gave the sermon at her funeral.

“Would Mom be sad we don't go to church?” I asked. The lake waves were Minnie’s drawn-out reply.

“We'll see her again,” she eventually said, and I looking back I wonder if it was more of an omen than a promise.

She shook me awake while it was still dark, dawn or just before it. Her knees dug into the sand as she leaned in through the unzipped tent slip wearing her red hoodie. “Wake up, Hen,” she demanded. “Sun's about up. I wanna show you something.” I rubbed the sand from my eyes with sandy fingers while hand-patting down my one-piece pjs tiredly. Then I grabbed my purple Northface, slipped on tennis shoes, and let myself be dragged along by Minnie’s strong grip and long strides. Dad slept soundly.

We walked east on the beach until Minnie cut up the dune and we hiked not far to Chapel Rock. The sandstone rock formation was siloed from the cliff coast by meters. The so-to-say micro-island had only dirt enough for one lonely tree, but it was large and healthy. Its root structure reached out over the tumultuous gap grasping for and drinking from the forest soil. An unimposing log fence served as a boundary against tourists’ curiousity, but Minnie and I stepped beyond the fence to sit on the cliff edge like so many others must have done before us. The dark horizon was teasing soft, delicate blues that preclude pastel oranges and the rose, a rising sun.

“Mornings like this are whales' favorite,” Minnie told me confidently. “It's when you're most likely to see them. They flop from the water to celebrate the morning, mother warmth. They’re playing—recess.”

I snapped, “Alfie Apollonovich in biology class told me that his older brother told him that there are no whales in Great Lakes,” I felt like I was scolding Minnie finally. My voice was tinged with sass and matter-of-factness. I explained, “Your stuff about whales got me made fun of.”

“Who you gonna believe? Them?” Minnie countered. “I've seen 'em. OK? And it won't matter, because you'll see them too. Just focus.” Then she stood up and wiped the dirt from her butt. “I’m climbing across the root bridge to that tree.” I looked at her and at the rock, the tree and its root bridge. I thought no way in hell I’d do that.

“Do it,” I said, “I dare you.” My fearless older sister, defying death was her thing.

“Listen squirt,” Minnie attacked probably half-jokingly, pointing her index finger at my chest. “I was gonna do it dare or no dare. Don’t go taking credit.” After a full body stretch, she stepped onto the root bridge not timidly, but going for it unhesitatingly.

The sun had barely risen above the edge of the vast horizon when, two steps in, she lost her balance and fell. I heard one terrible scream while my heart skipped a beat. I scrambled to the edge to gawk, to panic. Heavy waves crashed the cliff side from both directions whirl-pooling. The Lake had swallowed her, but then I saw it. A lake whale emerged from the chaos, exhaling through its blowhole and moaning almost sadly. Minnie barely clutched dearly to its dorsal fin.

I yelled to her, excited and terrified. But I don’t think she heard me even as she craned her neck to gaze in my direction. Without a word, not even a wave, just through the expression on her face, I could feel her saying goodbye. And so I didn’t feel sad when the whale dove under the surface, swimming madly into the sunrise.