“You know,” said Maude, “I was so jealous. You had Mother and Hen all to yourselves. I wanted them to go on forever, and it’s only now that I’m beginning to understand why they didn’t mind leaving. Somehow it just starts feeling like the right thing to do.”

No one said anything for a moment. Ned was in the drift boat with the kids, all of them giggling, and Merle was off alone in the kayak again, letting it spin on a quiet, wide stretch. Drake let the raft drift.

“Maude,” he said.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I am content. I was thinking of your sociopath just now. It’s funny how you keep meeting the same people, decade after decade.”

“If this was a movie, he’d die,” said Drake. “But I doubt he’s long for this world.”

“Horrible people live forever,” said Polly.

“Not always.”

“Mostly,” said Polly.

He smiled and she watched his mind go.

At home, Helen was back to her mud creatures. She’d found a new piece of old glass from the long-lost greenhouse. It was wavy, attached to a blackened piece of glazing, and only then did Polly remember the tiny lump of diamond she’d tucked in the windowsill bowl. There was no explanation for Dee storing diamonds with her tomatoes, but maybe they should look for more, get Harry and his archaeological sifting screens into the garden and all take a trip to Rome or Thailand or something somewhere pricey.

Helen was writing letters with the hose in the air now, flushing birds. It was supposed to rain and the whole yard would look like Helen’s body, slick pale clay that dried and turned to dust and would eventually coat every surface in Polly’s house. Dee’s Long Island garden and Jane’s garden in Michigan had been built on ancient sand dunes, ground quartz and coral dreaming green ocean thoughts. Polly’s mud dreamed nothing, but in the garden, digging, her bicycle lobotomy was meaningless, icing on the cake. Polly put her water glass down to weed, knowing she would find it again next week. Here you didn’t fret about garter snakes or daddy longlegs; almost nothing survived here, including the hissing hornworms of her memory of Frank’s garden. Polly had seen only one in Montana, crawling across the street as she drove to the grocery. She’d been pregnant with Helen, and Sam had watched quietly as she got out to stare at the thing, backed up, ran over the worm, and climbed out again to check the result.

Sam would remember that. How Polly loved him, how she would always be ready to die for him. When she was pregnant with Helen she’d worried about having to share him, him having to share her, but how could anyone pick a favorite child? This wasn’t lovers, apples or oranges, favorite novels. It was air or water.