“It’s a boat,” I said.

A boat on a stand, in a garden, miles away from the ocean.

It had to be big. I started from behind and paced it out. At least ten meters long.

And tall. At least three meters from the keel to the top of the cabin.

“Can we take off the tarp?” Lou asked.

The knots were hard between my fingers. I struggled to undo one after another. It was as if the wind and the weather had helped tighten them.

Lou helped out too, but most of the knots were too difficult for her. We had nothing we could use to cut the ropes, and besides, I didn’t want to destroy them. We were going to cover the boat again later, after we had seen it. We just needed to take a look. Nobody would notice.

I wound up the ropes carefully as I undid them, into huge coils that I laid side by side on the ground in the dry grass.

Lou moved them around, started sorting them by color. The blue ropes in one pile, the green in another. She could report that there were seven ropes in all.

My fingertips were sore and the palms of my hands raw by the time I had finally untied all the knots. The tarps hung in place by themselves, four of them. I pulled them off and they slid across the hull with a sweeping sound as they dropped to the ground.

It was a sailboat. The mast lay on the roof of the cabin. The hull was dark blue, like the ocean in the evening, and there were four windows on each side.

It rested on a stand made of unpainted wooden beams, hand-made from the looks of it, but solid.

There was a ladder lying over two crossbeams, a half meter above the ground, as if it belonged there.

I pulled it out. Aluminum, with paint splotches, but all in one piece and lovely. I lifted it up onto one end, placed it on the grass, and leaned it against the side of the boat.

“Are you going to climb up?” Lou asked.

“We have to, don’t we?” I said.

“Is it allowed?”

I smiled. “Do you see anyone we can ask?”

She looked around. “No.”

“Do you think I should do it?”

“I don’t know. You decide.”

“You decide too,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Should I do it?”

“Yes. If you want.”

I adjusted the ladder, pulling it a little farther out, so the approach angle was less steep. I stepped on the first rung. The second. The third.

The stand under the boat protested, creaking loudly. A tiny jerk shuddered through the entire structure. I stopped.

“Daddy?”

Maybe it wasn’t as solid as it looked. Or maybe it had something to do with the balance. I tried one more step.

“Daddy, maybe you shouldn’t do it, after all?”

“It will be fine,” I said.

But it wasn’t—I could feel the impact of my steps reverberating through the stand, as if I were in the process of tearing it down.