But I can’t muster anger. I said my piece back at the square. The best way to prove its truth is to be self-confident and move on. Besides, the words that weigh on me more are the ones my father said. Not that he said anything I didn’t know. Just that his saying them makes them real, and their reality hollows me out.

Time has taught me that the best antidote to hollowness is activity. In the early years after I’d left Bay Bluff, when I missed my mother, missed my family, missed Jack, I immersed myself in whatever mind-absorbing project I could find. Sometimes it had to do with work, sometimes the condo, sometimes friends. I was running away for sure. But what good would come of obsessing over things that had to be?

Needing something consuming to combat the hollowness now, I consider going to the house and fighting to get Dad to talk about something relevant. That would be worthwhile. So would searching deeper in his diaries for clues. Or sorting through old pictures. Or looking for that damn gun in the potting shed, though I cannot imagine that he would ever hide it in Mom’s sacred place.

There’s something about the way Jack is staring at me, though, that holds me in place. Forget shouting insults. If I want to prove self-possession, approaching him now would be a good way.

Being casual about it, I walk down the beach, or try. The tide is out, and with the sun high and the breeze up, the sand closest to the bluff has dried, meaning that I sink deeper, and the walking is hard. With as much dignity as wading through soft sand allows, I pass the firepit in a diagonal cut toward the water. He watches me the entire way, but what I initially took for challenge isn’t that on closer look. There’s something about his bare shoulders, and his features, even the placement of his hand on the dog’s back that has a slump to it.

Then I remember his parting words and realize that what I see is Jack subdued.

“The cat?” I ask when I’m close enough to be heard over the breeze and the waves.

He stares at me for a minute longer, then looks out over the water and does something with his mouth, like he’s trying to clean off a bad taste. “Couldn’t save her.”

All too clearly, I remember the blood on his shirt. “You tried. That’s something.”

After a negligent shrug, he stretches his neck side to side. It’s the dog who is watching me, bloodshot eyes pleading, begging me to say something to make his person feel better. I’m trying to decide what that should be, when the surf gives a thunderous crash.

I wait for the sound to die. “I’m sorry.”

Jack nods. “It happens.”

“That doesn’t make it easy. The frustration must be awful.”

He darts me a look. “Try anger.”

“Anger?”