“I think she figured she wouldn’t have time to garden. You know she went back to school.” Dad’s paying her tuition was a contentious part of their divorce. He didn’t see why he needed to pay for her to learn a skill if he was giving her alimony so that she didn’t have to work. She wanted both. She got both. He wasn’t pleased.

Memory of that shows on his face. “Such a ridiculous thing. And then she jumped off the boat. She’s hiding somewhere to punish me.”

I give him a minute to rethink. When he simply scowls at the peg-board in silence, I say a gentle, “Mom isn’t hiding, Dad. She died. You know she was living in Chicago when she left here. There was a car crash.”

Frightened eyes meet mine. “Margo?”

“Eleanor.”

“Chicago?”

I nod

“Not Albany?” he asks.

“No.”

“Not John Doe?”

“No. Mom. She was identified at the scene. Her identity was never in question.”

“Ah,” he says, opening his mouth in an exaggerated fashion to let the word out. Then, seeming to have had enough, he turns and strides off.

How had we ever played hide-and-seek in this potting shed? Alone here now, I take in the whole of it. It’s smaller than I remember—but isn’t that always the case? Life through a child’s eye has to be supersized to hold the huge wealth of possibility she sees. I would squeeze under the wheelbarrow or flatten myself behind the ladder when it was draped by one of Mom’s shirts. I would make myself long and narrow behind the coils of hose on the lowest shelf, praying those coils weren’t snakes.

Hah. Snakes. Not part of my memory, but something I can hear now coming from my daughter’s mouth.

Without conscious intent, I raise my camera and start shooting. Odd, but I’ve never photographed the potting shed before. The exterior, yes. But not here inside. I work quickly, snapping the whole of it, then individual parts, and all the while I feel a pressing need to preserve something that might soon be gone. It was a ridiculous thought. This shed will likely outlive us all. And still, I hurry to memorialize and keep it forever.

Like my father’s thoughts.

There’s no sign of him, not at the ocean edge, in the yard, or through the kitchen window. And for a minute I feel guilty, thinking that I should have followed him the instant he left. But I can’t crowd him in. If I do that, he’ll never talk. And that is what I want. It doesn’t matter whether I record what he says or write it down. I won’t be publishing a book on the life and times of Thomas Aldiss. All I want is more information than I’ve gotten so far.