SILAS FELT HIS KNEES crack when he crouched down to the liquor cabinet to brush the winter’s dust off the gin bottle’s neck. He would need to get more later that week. He stood back up, extending his leg a few times and listening for the pop. He had noticed his bones more lately, the way they sizzled and snagged on one another. He wasn’t an old man yet, not nearly. But his body had more to say than it ever had before, and he didn’t quite know how to listen. He poured heavy and pushed the bottle back onto the shelf. His fingers were sticky with lime juice, freshly squeezed. He used the bottled stuff at home, but not in New Hampshire. This house was about taking the time to do things right. He watched the tonic fizz over the ice and pulled open the screen door onto the porch, then took a seat on the deep lounger that overlooked the yard out to the lake.

He’d heard the girls out on the water earlier, but now the yard was silent. As silent as it ever got here, which was way less silent than their suburban neighborhood back home. This house had always been drenched in the sounds of life, wild in all its forms except for human. Right now, in the thick golden light, Silas could hear the sounds of the katydids rise and fall. If he closed his eyes, he could mistake their rhythm for his own breath, the way their noise overtook everything else until it was inside him. Silas sighed and took a sip of his drink.

This house was his favorite place on Earth. It was his home, in the truest sense. No matter what was happening in the Harrison family, they came here every summer. Silas could walk through the halls and point to each stain on the wallpaper, each dent in the screens, and tell its story. When his children were little and interested in him above all else, he would do exactly that. He could still remember the way they would ask for more, always more. It had been a while since either of his children had asked him for anything of his, other than his wallet. Of course, being back at the New Hampshire house was bittersweet. Every inch of that house held atoms of his brother, cells from his skin or his breath. Silas looked at the driveway, at the motorcycle he had wheeled out earlier from its tomb in the shed. Silas took out Philip’s bike every summer, first thing. He loved the process of caring for it, washing away the winter of neglect with gentle coos like it was a missing pet that had just come home. In those moments, Silas could pretend he could wash the time back.