“The LEAST I can do?” he roared. “The least? Who is cutting trails through the woods, rewriting cookbooks, paying bills, dealing with that garden gnome night and day, apparently now buying DOGS, writing, for God’s sake, another book through endless interruptions so that maybe SOMEONE might have a college education. I’m the guy doing all those things for you, when WHAT for Christ’s sake do you imagine you are to ME?” And he slammed back into his trailer before she could reply.

Fiona stared at the empty trailer steps where Al had been. She thought of the Big Dipper making its transit every night across their bedroom window. Shining brilliantly as if just for her and Marlin and disappearing. The terrible sadness of people she loved doing the same. The frightening knowledge that people you were part of could be just gone. The hope that all of them would one day appear again as the Dipper did each night but how you just didn’t know. She guessed it was this way for everyone. Al had lost Billy and Martha but for now he had the four sisters. She smiled suddenly because she knew who they were to him. Who everyone is to each other. “We’re your boat.”

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Andrea Cascardi, Margaret Ferguson, Lynne Missen, and Ken Setterington.