There was the baby, for one thing. I saw him suspended beside me, his naked arms and legs healthy and fat. I caught him as he drifted past, pressed his cold skin against me. His heart beat where my heart beat. His old memories were here, too, just like mine. I saw the light coming in a window onto a clean sheet. I heard her voice, my mother. I felt the electric shock of the cold water as he plummeted from the deck.

Glancing around, I saw a living room: couch and chairs and an end table with a lamp. Barnacles blistered the arms of the furniture, and seaweed drifted past. I thought I’d just arrived, but it appeared we’d both lived here a long, long time. There were my books, and there were my sweaters, and there was a mirror I could comb my hair in. The baby played on the sand, stacking quahog shells like blocks. I’d been taking care of him all this time.

Drowning isn’t entirely painless. It doesn’t hurt exactly, but the anguish of wanting to breathe, that’s a profound and complicated pain, to want something with all the force of your mind and instincts, to feel meant to breathe and at the same time kept from breathing. To feel like you must breathe because the stars and the tides and the moon and sun have instructed it thusly. I opened my mouth. I felt the cold water. The baby grasped my finger with his cold, cold hand. His eyes were the milky white of the blind. He never cried. I took a breath. I tried to take a breath.

Chapter 33

33

I was rocking.

That’s what I knew first.

I almost drifted back to sleep, cradled and moving like this.

Then I heard water.

Then the thwack, thwack of oars.

I felt the water all around me.

My consciousness seemed to swim up from some deep place. I rose and rose and when I broke the surface it was with the sudden awareness that I was in the bottom of the rowboat, moving swiftly through the water. I opened my eyes and saw the winter sky all foggy and dark.

I thought, I’m not dead, but I’m probably going to die tonight. I didn’t feel scared, but I did feel aware suddenly of how much I liked being alive. There were so many good, gentle things. So many nights like this with fog and stars. I loved fog and stars. I thought about how I hadn’t yet had dinner and about how much I loved dinner, all kinds of dinner. I thought about how alone Lucas would be. And I thought about Ed Frank, and Jim Cardoza and Ferry-All, and Gordon and Sebastian and all the old fishermen, and the Grendles next door, and Martha at the library, and Elijah, and Tuck.