Once Willa has the sailboat in position, the lock doors close and the water begins to drop. With each foot, the boat sinks, until the walls rise high above their heads, until only the top of the mast extends above ground level. Taylor is paying out the rope when a surge of water pushes the boat toward the lock wall. The fenders squish and Taylor’s muscles strain as she and Willa push the boat away from the wall.

The water stops at forty-nine feet, and the doors at the other end are totally exposed. Water cascades down their massive surface, and they remind Taylor of something out of a fantasy movie, the kind of doors from behind which a horde of orcs would swarm. Instead, the doors open into the next lock. This one lowers them another forty-nine feet, and a third lock drops them yet another forty-nine feet.

It takes nine hours to go through the whole canal, and after they pass three giant cargo ships, Taylor’s fear of freighters has worn away. She and Willa swap places periodically to catch a break from the sun under the beach umbrella, but Taylor can feel the heat on the end of her nose and the tops of her feet. The palms of her gloves are blackened with oily dirt and her arms are sore as the boat clears the final lock. Taylor takes over the tiller. “I swear to God, if I have to go through one more lock . . .”

“You do know there are locks in the New York canal system, right?” Willa says, handing her a bottle of water. “And in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.”

Taylor pops the cap and squirts Willa’s forehead. “You shut your filthy mouth.”

Willa retaliates, hitting Taylor in the cheek. “Then I guess you don’t want the good news.”

“What’s the good news?”

“We conquered the Welland Canal.”

Taylor grabs her camera to snap a picture of Willa flexing her biceps, then grins. “We did, didn’t we?”

“Hell yeah, we did,” Willa says. “Because we are Whiskey . . .” Her smile slips. When they first bought the boat, Finley came up with their own version of a pre-game huddle cheer, in which they’d slap a three-way high five while shouting “Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot!”

Taylor’s throat is too thick with tears to say her part, and there is only silence where Finley would shout “Foxtrot!” But after a beat, Taylor taps her water bottle against Willa’s. “Foxtrot would be proud.”

“Yeah.” Willa nods. “She really would.”

43.0962° N, 79.0377° W

Make time for wonder.

Willa