It was August when Emily came to Wolf Island, a full year since Cole first arrived. From far away I saw the boat that Emily was on, a toy out there in the water. Closer and closer, and bigger and bigger, and it bumped up against the loading dock and let down its plank.

Emily stepped off the boat.

I saw her and she saw me. I knew it was her, and she came toward me and we stood and looked at one another.

I’d never met another person so exactly my height. I looked into eyes level with my eyes.

“Just start at the beginning,” she said.

We walked along the shore in the dusky August light. The beach was so pristine it filled me with a great swell of nostalgia, as if I would never see it like this again. I looked around, trying to memorize what I saw: the gold sand, the hazy light on the water.

“It was August,” I told her. “And I was working in the information booth.”

We walked for hours. We went to the house, so she could see where he’d been for many months. I pointed at the place in the bay where the houseboat used to be. She shook Lucas’s hand. “His wife,” I said to Lucas.

He held on to her hand as if he couldn’t help himself, gripped it so hard she opened her eyes wide in surprise. Carefully, as if it hurt him to do it, he raised his chin to look her square in the face. “Do you know where he is?” Lucas asked. She shook her head, and he dropped her hand, his expression of hope collapsing all at once.

Later, alone at the end of the dock, Emily and I watched the boats swaying. I still wasn’t used to the look of the bay without the red houseboat. I still scanned the bay for it, even though I knew I wouldn’t see it. So much of my life had felt that way, that more was missing than was there. I wondered if Emily felt that way, too.

“Do you remember it?” I asked her. “Falling?”

She shook her head. “Not really. But I remember him standing at the top of the stairs beside me, and he was angry. He was always angry. He was a deeply jealous person. It’s like he wanted to possess me, and whenever he realized he couldn’t, not really you know, he would freak out, become enraged.”

“I can see that,” I said.