“Anthony Coletti,” I said. “The little boy in the red houseboat. The boy with the straw hat. I remember you now.” With the silent parents and the drowned sister. All those years in Bhone Bay when we were young. He must have seen us from his houseboat the way we’d seen him from our porch, our lawn, our dock.

“This is your boat,” I said. “And you remember us.”

He looked around the little cabin, his eyes resting on the mildewed cushions, the hooks hanging over the table with pots hanging from them.

“Oh god,” I said. “That’s how you knew about the shed door, and the way Lucas used to spin the net. And how my mom used to sit like that on the dock. You spent years watching us. You knew about the lady’s slippers. Oh my god. And your sister. Your poor sister. You killed her.”

“I didn’t kill my sister,” he said, disgusted. “Would you kill Lucas? A sister is sacred. I long for my sister every day. You of all people should understand that. Jesus Christ, Lydia, are you some kind of monster? Kill my sister! Like I would ever lay a hand on her. She was ten years old. Ten years old.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“But Lucas still had his sister, didn’t he? Jesus Christ, I hated him. Before I ever met him, I hated him. I hated you both. The way you were always together. Always! And I had no one.”

“But your mother...your parents. You had them.”

“No, I didn’t have my parents.” He shook his head at me, as though I were so stupid he couldn’t believe it. “They were like invisible people after Holly died. They couldn’t stand to be around me. They couldn’t stand to be around each other. Luckily, I had your mother,” he said. “She was the mother I wanted because she understood what it felt like to have no one.”

“But how did you—how did you know her?”

“She swam out to me. She hung on to the edge of the boat and talked to me, said she’d been watching me. You know why she believed I was Colin? Why she was so desperate to believe? Because she was dying of guilt.” He leaned toward me, his face coming closer and closer. So many expressions on his face at once. His eyes were angry—and then he lifted his eyebrows in a sorrowful way, a pitying way. But when he spoke next his mouth was malicious. “She killed him,” he whispered. “She sacrificed him for you and Lucas. And then she couldn’t live with herself.”

And then the boat hit something. The jolt sent Cole against the wall. And in that instant, I rolled off the bench onto the floor.