But logging season didn’t last forever, and during the down times, Molly begged Nathaniel for the chance to swim in the river, especially during the sweltering days of August. Their tenement bordered the river, and leaving Molly alone and unsupervised for so many hours in the day was a recipe for disaster, so he taught her to swim. She was a natural, and he called her his little water sprite, which she loved. He took her to the public park to swim in the lake at least once a week during the summer.

But the river beckoned. They could see it from their fourth-floor apartment, and Molly pestered incessantly, especially when she saw the Italians who lived on the opposite bank wading in the river. What eleven-year-old child had the wisdom to see the danger? It was late summer, and the logging season was tapering to an end. Days could go by without a schooner, and the heat sometimes drove people to take a quick dip in the river.

“I was always so tired during those years,” he said. “I worked the overnight shift at the newspaper and only had a few hours to sleep each morning. Then I went to class, came home and fed Molly, and then it was time to go to work again. One day I fell asleep after class. I had an hour before I needed to make dinner, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, Molly was gone.”

He immediately suspected where she’d gone and darted to the window to see if she was wading in the river. There was no sign of her, but what he saw chilled his blood. Hundreds of logs barreling downstream. A schooner had arrived and unloaded its haul. If Molly had been in the river . . .

He hadn’t even put on his shoes. He merely vaulted down the stairs and tore across the yard to the riverbank. There was trouble downstream. A group of Italians clustered on the bank, standing over something.

“It was Molly,” he said blankly. “She was still wearing her school clothes, but her feet were bare. She’d hiked up her skirt to wade in the river, but the current could be so strong. And then the logs came, and she didn’t have a chance.”

Caroline’s face was horrified. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Molly would be thirty-one if she had lived, probably married with a bunch of kids. Now she would always be eleven years old, a beautiful water sprite who would forever be his greatest failing.

“After Molly died, I felt like a weight settled on top of me, sucking me down. It comes back sometimes. It’s a sense of failure, drowning out whatever good is in my life. I’ve lived that day over a million times. What if I’d had just one more cup of coffee? What if I’d been firmer with Molly about enforcing the rules?”