Jenna’s head disappeared and Beth climbed back up onto the pier, smiling as she scanned the water.

“I see you!” she yelled though she couldn’t.  “I see—”

Wet arms wrapped around her own and Beth screamed.

“Got you,” John David said.  “You’re going in.”

“No, J.D.,” Beth pleaded as he muscled her toward the edge.  Though only a prepubescent boy of eleven he was strong and quick.  “I’m your mother and I am telling you that if you push me into that water I’ll ground you forever.  Is it worth it?”

John David sighed and let go.

Beth stepped away from the edge and faced her son, thinking, You’ll be taller than me in two years.

Beads of water glistened on his hairless littleboy chest.

“Now I want to tell you something,” she said with convincing parental sternness.  “You listening to me?”

“Yes ma’am.”

His voice was still high, at least a year from turning.

“I want to tell you…this!”

Beth shoved him off the pier and he screamed as he hit the water.  She laughed, raised her hands in victory, and shouted, “Never underestimate the Mom!”

As John David bemoaned the injustice Jenna jerked him underwater by his ankles.  The ripples made by the jet ski had begun to lap against the beams of the pier.

“I’m going in!” Beth yelled.  “Don’t stay out long!”

“Come on, Mom, it’s Friday night!”

Walking back up the pier, she acknowledged this interval of peace—her children had touched her; what else mattered?

When she reached the cool grass she glanced back at her kids, then on across the lake at the quarter mile of shoreline where the monster used to live.

She’d received a letter from Andrew Thomas after Walter’s car turned up in Vermont.

As she walked into the house to fix herself a drink and look through her wedding album, the words of that thing echoed in her head:

Dear Beth,

Before I begin, please know that I did not murder my mother.  And don’t believe what you read in the papers.  I say this only to qualify what I have to tell you about your husband.  Walter is dead, Beth, and it’s my fault, and I am so, so sorry.  I want you to know that he died protecting you and Jenna and John David, and he did not suffer.  Also know that because of his efforts, you and the children are safe.  He’s buried in a secluded grove of pines in the Vermont countryside.  I wish I could personally deliver this news to you but I have to disappear now.  I hope you understand.  I’m not an evil person, Beth.  I tried to make the right choices.  I’m going to keep on trying to make the right choices.  But evil is alive and well in the world.  And sometimes all we can do is not enough.

Andy

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