I nodded toward the rainwater tank in the garden. “There.” I tried all the keys from the house. One by one. “None of them fit,” I said.

“Why not?” Lou asked.

“So we have to go home.”

“But can’t we open it some other way?”

I nodded slowly, realizing how thirsty I was. I thought about the water down there. Clear, dark, cold water.

I struck the padlock again and again. First with a stone, then with a rusty spade I found in the outbuilding.

But the lock was far too solid. They only made things this solid back in the old days.

While I was banging away at the padlock, I tried smiling at Lou—see, it will be fine, the smile was supposed to say, see, I’ll fix everything. But I didn’t fix anything. I just got more and more sweaty.

Finally I put the spade down and sank down on the lid of the tank.

Lou looked at me with dissatisfaction. Then she reached into her hair with one hand, took something out, and handed it to me. A bobby pin.

“That’s what thieves do.”

Jesus. “Where did you learn that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Did you see it in a movie?”

“Maybe. I can’t remember.”

I puttered with the hairpin for a while, jiggling and coaxing the lock. Finally it opened. I raised the lid. We stuck our heads over the edge and peered down into the darkness.

“Yoo-hoo,” Lou called. Her voice echoed.

An old iron bucket was hanging on the inside of the tank. I threw it down. Hollow sounds reverberated against the walls.

Then we heard the sound of a splash far below. “Water!” Lou said.

The sound of water, it was really water.

I felt the bucket take hold. Tip over. And grow heavier as it filled up.

I pulled it up again as Lou leaned forward in excitement. Then I lifted it over the edge. We looked inside, both of us. It was only a quarter full and the contents could not exactly be called water. The sour-smelling liquid was a light-brown color and there were flakes of rust swirling through it.

Lou wrinkled her nose.

“Can we drink it?”

I shook my head, realizing how disappointed I was.

“But I’m so thirsty,” Lou said.

“I know that.”

“Very thirsty.”

“We can’t drink it.”

She bowed her head, mumbling from between her shoulders. “Mommy always had water.”

“What did you say?”

She looked at me. “Mommy always had water.”

“She certainly did not.”

“She certainly did.”

“But it was from the tap.” I was about to say more, but stopped myself in time. Because Anna had always had water. She always remembered to bring along an extra bottle—for the children, for us. But now we were sitting here, without Anna, without water, only Lou and I.