“No,” she said. “It’s not land.”

“You’re right, it’s not land—just the ocean, as far as I can see. And waves. Huge waves.”

“A storm!” Lou said.

“Take it easy,” I said. “The captain will pilot you safely through this.”

“Are you the captain?”

“That I am—and look! Do you see the pirate ship!”

We sailed. We fought off pirates. We met dolphins and a mermaid. Lou shouted, gesticulating with her arms, and took the helm. She laughed loudly.

Soon she wanted to be the captain. And I became an obedient sailor, albeit a pretty stupid one. She had to explain everything to me, while she laughed even more. Because the sailor got everything mixed up, couldn’t tell the difference between right and left, fore and stern, and was afraid of everything, especially the pirates.

But we made it anyway. Thanks to an amazing ride on the backs of two dolphins. And especially, thanks to her. “Thank God for your heroism and your shrewdness, captain,” I said.

“Shrewdness?”

“That means to be sly,” I said. “You are a sly captain.”

We played for an hour, maybe two. I breathed easily up there on deck, beneath the shadow of the trees, where there was a palpable breeze.

But Lou kept looking at the boards that blocked off the opening.

“Can we open the door?”

“No,” I said.

But she wouldn’t let it go. “We have to open it,” she said, pounding on the boards. “You can break them, can’t you?”

“We can’t go around breaking other people’s things,” I said.

“Oh. Okay, then,” she said, her face ashamed.

Then she thought about it. “But they’re not here.”

Lou didn’t ask for things very often. And she didn’t give up very often either.

“Fine,” I said. “We can see if there is a key inside.”

“Where?”

I pointed. “In the house.”

“But isn’t the house locked too?”

“We may have to break something, then,” I said, “after all.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” she said quietly.

I had to laugh.

We broke a window in the back and entered what turned out to be the living room.

I tiptoed through the house, but stopped when I realized what I was doing and began walking normally. I could stomp as loudly as I liked. There was nobody around who could hear us anyway.

The rooms were simple, unpretentious. Not many ornaments, just an overloaded bookshelf against the wall in the living room, and on one of the long walls a photograph of a snow-covered mountain by a fjord.

The people who had lived here must have left without taking much with them. Maybe just clothing and the most essential items.

I suddenly felt like I was trespassing on somebody else’s life and hurried through the rooms to the front of the house. I stepped out into the hallway.

There on the wall was a key cabinet. So simple. Proper. It looked like a little bathhouse, with yellow and white stripes, the old-fashioned kind that could still be found in some places by the beach.