She leaned back in her chair, regarding me. “Honey, he didn’t die of pneumonia,” she said. “I remember it. That baby drowned.”

“But—how?”

She nodded her head sympathetically, her ugly curls bobbing up and down. I hated her face, poor Marlene. “He went over. That’s all we knew. It was a terrible accident.”

“Oh shit,” I said. “The ferry?” She nodded again. “When you say went over, you mean—the railing?” I pictured Baby B soaring through the dark night toward the water, and felt a kind of darkness moving over me, like a swarm of insects all around my head. “I better go outside,” I said to Marlene. But outside I felt only a little better, the cold wet air as heavy as a blanket.

“You need me to get you some water?” Marlene said, from the doorway.

“No, thank you,” I said. I need to be by the water, I told myself, and headed toward Tame Jaw Beach. When I got there I kept seeing seals by the rocks, their silver heads as smooth and round as infants.

Baby B hadn’t died of pneumonia on his way to the hospital. He’d drowned in the harbor, in the channel, or the bay. I couldn’t think of anything worse. It was the secret fear under every other secret fear. Whenever Lucas came home late or didn’t come home at all, that was what I wasn’t letting myself imagine. The dark water, all around. This was the worst kind when it came to my nightmares, the one I awoke from gasping.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Colin, the ferry, the water. I tried to use Dr. Brent’s meditation techniques, but it was no good. The thoughts wouldn’t go away. How had it happened and why had they lied? And underneath those questions was Cole. Did he have something to do with it? How was that possible?

I saw the Grendles, our neighbors, in their driveway, both of them eightysomething and plump, always in jogging suits. We’d lived next door to each other all my life.

“Sorry!” I said. “Sorry to bother you, but I have a question about my family. It’s about my brother who died. Remember?”

“Of course we remember,” Mr. Grendle said.

“Do you remember how he died?”

“Do you think we’re senile?” Mr. Grendle said.

“It’s not that,” I said. “I just found out how he died. I always thought he died of pneumonia.”

“No,” Mr. Grendle said. “That’s not how it happened.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I said. “Do you know why our parents lied?”

“I don’t know what your parents meant by it,” Mrs. Grendle said. “But as for us, we don’t make a habit of chasing other people’s pain. Why would we bring it up? It’s not our story.”