She leans forward, curious. “What’s on your mind? You didn’t just come here to say hello, did you?”

“No, I have something I want to say to you. I—” Sherri pauses. “Val, I’m so sorry. I’ve been sorry for such a long time.”

“What on earth for?”

“I told Curtis about you and Danny. You told me to keep it to myself, and I did, right up until I let it slip. Curtis overheard, and, well.” Sherri looks at her hands. “We both know what happened next.”

Val sinks back in her chair, amused. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sher. You can let that go. Curtis knew about Danny and I long before that day. He came to Lake Beulah because he thought he could change my mind. And if you want to know the truth, if your boyfriend hadn’t hit his head on the rowboat, you might have ended up attending my funeral instead of his, and none of these people would exist.” She waves at her family photograph. “I think about that more times than you’ll know.”

Sherri has replayed what happened that day so often and for so long that her memory of the events leading up to Arthur’s death is like a well-traveled road in her mind. What Val tells her is a strange detour. “You’re kidding.”

“I told him to stay away from us, but, well, that’s all she wrote.” Val reaches for Sherri’s hand. Her nails are long and perfectly painted. “I never had a chance to tell you how sorry I was about Arthur. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t think Curtis ever got over it. He changed after that. Not a lot. He’s still an asshole, only now he doesn’t seem like he wants to kill someone, just give them a hard time.”

“I keep thinking of everything that went wrong that day,” Sherri says. “What if we’d taken the boat out five minutes later? What if—”

“Don’t do that to yourself, Sher. Awful as it was, it happened the way it was meant to happen. You can’t beat yourself up.”

“But I do.” Sherri hasn’t ever admitted this out loud to anyone before. As far as the people closest to her know, it’s old news. But Arthur’s death never feels old to Sherri.

“Curtis owns Wilson’s Carpet—did you see it by the exit off 39? He makes a fortune. Burns me to think that he bought that place with the tip money I gave him.”

“You’re kidding me.” Sherri thinks maybe even some of her own tip money had helped Curtis build his carpet empire after so much of it had gone missing. “You couldn’t get your money back?”

“Nope, no paper trail. I couldn’t even prove I gave him the time of day.”