In the days after her warning, my grandmother made a good effort to keep us away from the lake, but too much of the responsibility was on her. The elevation was hard on my grandfather, and he spent most of his time sleeping—snoring softly on one of the couches, sometimes with a green tank of oxygen at his feet, the plastic mask sealed against his nose and mouth. I would stop to watch the rise and fall of his chest, his exhales fogging the mask. Then I would suck in a breath as fast as I could and hold it in my lungs, trying to feel a difference between this air and other air, how it was less breathable.

My grandmother, though, was still spry, and, meticulous as she was, surprisingly at home on the docks and the back porches. She shepherded us to campfires and cookouts, drove us to lakes safe to swim in, showed us how to make pie, and pointed us toward the easiest hiking trails.

When I think about that summer, I do feel for her. I find myself trying to bend this moment just enough to see it through my grandmother’s eyes. Tired from the long drive up to the cabin. Watching these girls fold themselves into the dining room chairs she had just dusted a winter’s worth of insect corpses from, knowing we were in danger, but not how much, exactly, or how to convince us of it. Knowing, anyway, that we wouldn’t listen.

* * *

On Saturday, we all went boating on one of the upper lakes. Vienna and me, our grandparents, Vienna’s aunt Chelsea and cousin Abigail. Vienna found me in the parking lot by the boat rental place that morning, scrunched her nose up, and told me, “Abby has nightmares. Abby thinks a rattlesnake is going to come through the window and eat her. I’m going to sleep in your bed tonight.”

“Good,” I said.

We rented a pontoon boat, and brought a cooler with sodas and beer and sandwiches the grandmothers made. The back of the boat was flat, a platform raised a little above the seats at the front, and Vienna claimed this part for us to sunbathe on. She took off her shirt, lay down in her swimsuit and shorts, the pale landscape of her back glittering like the light off the water. We weren’t old enough to really care about tanning, but we were old enough to pretend we did. The flooring of the boat prickled against my stomach.

“Did you put on sunscreen?” my grandmother asked, and I nodded, though I hadn’t. Vienna yawned and rolled over onto her back. Her swimsuit, like mine, was old, a magenta one-piece that faded to white in the middle and pulled too tightly at the top and bottom, threatening to slip down. In my periphery, I could see the pale tops of her breasts. I turned my cheek against the canvas so I couldn’t look at her.

“You’re gonna get skin cancer,” Abigail said.