But mostly Polly had been lucky, and she knew it. Never the wrong person on the stairs, in a car, in a boat, in her bed, someone she’d welcome as sane, someone who would slip his humanity. Instead Polly had sweet boys, randy boys, smart boys, run-of-the-mill feckless boys. There were some shits, but she had good friends, cousins, teachers, brothers, lovers. It wasn’t fair, but it was a relief. She recognized her good fortune.

Her memories were waking up like her eyes. One bad man brings another to mind. Polly faced west, to where Ariel had been, to where the bridge had been and Asta had last breathed air. It didn’t seem to matter that it had been sixty-one years ago, any more than the thought of Ariel was easier on the sixth rather than the first day.

She climbed back up to the path. A stroller approached, and Jane’s dog once again barked. It didn’t jar Polly out of her state. Back in the car, on the way home, she wondered how anyone could miss the snakeskin on the road, the thin new screen of smoke in the air from Oregon fires, the man watching from the window across the street when she came to a stop. Why could she see these things and not the car coming from the left?

She braked in time. No one had to know.

They set off in a convoy, shuttled the cars, and put in at Loch Leven. They’d brought too much food for a picnic. Polly and Ned and the kids took their drift boat, Jane rode with Maude in Drake’s raft, and Merle paddled defiantly in a single kayak, one arm making up for the other, going faster than anyone else. Josie and Harry used a double kayak, and at one point when they trailed the others, Ned nodded, and Polly looked to see Harry swing his paddle experimentally at Josie, who was tilting, maybe trying to see how far she could lean without losing her balance. They were going to keep breaking their minds and hearts over Graham’s guilt.

The silence and isolation of the river was a relief. There wasn’t much you could do on the planet more beautiful than riding the surface of the water through this landscape. The water was moving, you were moving, the world had a combined hush and roar. Swallows and a golden eagle, ducks and herons. When they passed an old washing machine jutting out between 1930s cars, Polly pointed to the mangle and tried to explain to Sam and Helen. They followed Drake down a chute to a better channel, pulling to reach a beach on the far end of the island where Graham said he’d stopped with Ariel on that last day. Drake knew his stuff; people from his former life would have been stunned.