She turns off the main road and passes the sign for Jesuit Island. Massive, droopy weeping willow trees glaze the surface of the water, and the boathouses sit sentinel, as if waiting patiently for the boat traffic to die down so that they can see their reflections again. Tall, old trees and brush front the channel by Beber Camp. She remembers the joyful sound of camp songs skipping off the water and the flotillas of counselors in training who’d pass by the point in their canoes when she’d spent that week with Arthur. They sang about Old Mother O’Leary’s cow tipping over the lantern in the shed to start the Chicago fire, and Father Abraham who had seven sons, seven sons had Father Abraham. It is refreshing to see that the camp is still there, but where is Javell’s, the old lodge with the public beach where she and Roberta had bought Popsicles and candy when they were girls? It’s gone, replaced with matching, suburban-style McMansions squatting hip-to-hip across their lots. They seem wrong for the lake with their boring, pristine yards, greedily hogging the newly private sandy frontage, their Jet Skis and cigarette boats propped on the shore stations next to their fancy fiberglass piers. This isn’t the Lake Beulah she remembers. It was better when lake property wasn’t thought of as such a luxury, back when the divide between rich and poor wasn’t as stark as it is now, back when Jet Skis didn’t buzz around like angry hornets. It’s strange. When she was young, Sherri thought East Troy was slow and small. Now that she’s older and it isn’t as slow or as small as it used to be, she wants it back the way it was.

She steels herself for her return to Jesuit Island, half expecting to pass the ghost of her frenzied, grief-stricken former self driving in the opposite direction the last time she’d left. The gatehouse where the gatekeeper had turned Gwen away has been long since abandoned, judging from the moss-covered roof tiles and empty cans of Miller Lite on the ledge. She drives past it, feeling rich because she is rich now, but what difference does that make? Money doesn’t calm her nerves. Money doesn’t make her feel she’s gotten her shit together.