“It’s nice,” she says. “It’s cold.” She walks out into the river. The color of her skin is pale and even across her ass and down the backs of her legs, with a shadow of tan in the small of her back and on her shoulders.

It is cold, but the cold feels good. Inger slips off her tank top and shorts and leaves them on top of the straw hat. Then she’s thigh-deep in the river and God is she lovely, dragging her hands across the surface at her sides. For a flat river at low water it moves fast, opening puddles around each of her fingers.

At the deepest part of the channel I hear a shriek, and above us are two peregrines, one on either side of the river, hunting together. They both stop in trees and stare down at us, black-masked and hunched in the shoulders. The one on the right gives a high-pitched kek kek kek.

“That’s an immature,” Jo says, sculling with her hands against the current. “The other one is teaching it to hunt.”

“Call to them,” I say.

Jo digs in her heels and shakes water off her hands. When she cups them to her mouth and whistles, the younger bird stops his screeching and looks down. The parent ignores Jo, dives on a near vertical to the surface of the river, and flies south with what looks like a merganser in its talons. The younger bird, with a last look at Jo, leaves his tree and follows the burdened adult, catching up, circling back, screeching to be fed. They disappear downriver.

“I got my show for today,” Jo says. “I’m going back.” She ducks under the swirling brown current one last time, and comes up blinking while water streams from her face and hair. She wades for shore, like something from a dream. “Stay and swim,” she says, “I’ll save you shower water.” She slips her dress over her head. There’s a long silence while we watch her go.

“Can you get her to go to a doctor?” I ask Inger.

“No one’s ever gotten Jo to do anything,” Inger says.

“Now’s the time.”

“I’ve told her that. She doesn’t want to go.”

“I’d pay for it.”

“I would, too,” Inger says. “She says no.”

I watch downriver where the birds went and something sinks in me, some chance I thought I had. I grab for the remaining one. “My father’s coming,” I say. “I’ve asked him to. He’ll look at her.”

“She needs blood tests. Your dad can’t do blood tests in the screenhouse.”