Silas jumped, let go of Ruth, and hopped to his feet a little too quickly, his vision still syrupy from the whiskey.

“Hiya, kiddo,” he said, wincing. He hadn’t called Sean “kiddo” in a very long time.

“What is going on here?”

“Ruth was just feeling a little down.”

Sean looked warily from Silas to Ruth, and then out at the water. Silas walked up to his son and put his hands on his shoulders. Sean was even taller than he had been when the summer started; Silas was sure of it. He was sturdy, his shoulders broad. As the dead cleared their fog from this space, he could see him more plainly. Yes, Sean looked like Philip. But he also looked like him.

“How about you go get Mickey, and we can all head on home?”

“What are you talking about, Dad?” Sean asked, staring out over his shoulder. “Mickey went swimming with Ruth.”

Silas turned around to face Ruth, ready for her explanation. She was exactly where he had left her, huddled up on herself, hands gripping her knees. The moonshine made her white shoulder blades rise from the dark of her towel like a creature from the deep. The kind of being that lived a whole lifetime without ever being seen. But then, as if in contradiction, a bright beam cut through the woods behind her and caught her perfectly in its center. Silas and Sean both shaded their eyes as they looked toward the source, but Ruth stayed perfectly still.

“Hiya, chickadee,” a man’s voice said. “Is it done?”

Silas turned back to Ruth just in time to see her give one small but certain nod.

LILY

ONE TIME, AS A child, Lily went diving for quarters in her uncle’s pool. She remembered the thick white sunscreen her mother slopped onto her face like mayonnaise, and the way it stung her eyes. But it didn’t matter. She was the youngest of her cousins and the only girl, and she was going to hold her breath the longest, even if it killed her.

Lily dove under the water and shot to the bottom, a submarine with a mission. She opened her eyes, ignored the burn, and reached through the fog of her blond hair for a glittering coin, managing to touch it just enough to send it scuttling deeper. But Lily didn’t panic. She used her fingers to pull herself along the porous pool bottom like a frog, the fabric of her bathing suit catching on the rough floor just enough so she could feel it resist as it let her go. When she finally grabbed the quarter, her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She closed her eyes and shot to the surface, her victorious hand outstretched. But when she came up and inhaled, she inhaled water. Her head was underneath something solid, heavy.

It was not what she had expected.