Silas knew where the gun itself was: right where it had always been, behind Rose’s old shoeboxes in their closet. The bullets used to be in a drawer nearby, but at some point, Lily moved them. For years, she went back and forth: Was it safer to keep the bullets close enough to the gun that they could be put together by a home invader and used against the family while they slept? Or was it safer to keep them out in the boathouse, where no one could reach them, including them? She worried too much, he thought as he blindly swept his palm along the dusty recesses of the boathouse shelves.

The first voice he heard was Ruth’s. Maybe if Sean or Mickey had talked first, he would’ve ignored it, found what he needed, and left. But Ruth’s voice made him go still.

“Cody keeps texting me,” she said. “He wants us to go over there tonight.”

“All of us?” Sean asked, and Ruth laughed.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m sure he did mean all of us,” Mickey said. “Sean is the one who is actually friends with them.”

“If you say so. But that’s not the vibe I’m getting from these texts.”

There was a shuffle, and then Mickey made a sound somewhere between a yelp and a gag.

“Let me see that,” Sean said.

“Absolutely not,” Mickey answered. “Gross.”

There came a slap, a squeal, and a thud, and then the phone was in Sean’s hand.

“No fucking way,” he said.

Silas noticed from his son a tone he hadn’t heard in a long time. Determination, protection. He sounded like Philip. Silas swallowed the thought down and stayed quiet, his search forgotten. The water slapped the concrete of the dock with each passing boat’s wake, splashing over the empty boat lift below.

“You are not going over there alone. I’ll tell Mom if I have to.”

“Mom won’t care; she loves the Watersons.”

“She’ll care if she reads these.”

“It’s my phone, narc,” Ruth said. “That’s theft, or something.”

Silas waited for Ruth to tell them about that morning at the clearing. The new pit. But she didn’t, and he found that he liked it, to share a secret with her.

“Come on, Mick! This could be your chance with you-know-who.”

“Ruth!”

Silas remembered a night years back when the kids played MASH on the front porch, a rare moment in which Sean was still willing to indulge Mickey in “girl games.” Mickey named one of the Waterson boys for the “marry” category, and Sean made kissing noises every time the boy came within a twenty-foot radius for the rest of the summer. Mickey had to fight not to cry every time.

“He doesn’t know who I’m talking about!”

“There’s only two of them,” Sean shot back. “But I’d rather not know any of it.”