“He’ll still be their daddy.” Colleen was treading on unfamiliar territory, an unmapped land she didn’t truly understand because she didn’t have her own children, and yet she could have just as well been talking about their own dad.

“You’re the wrong person to complain to, Lena.” Hallie hesitated before she continued. “It feels like I’m losing everything that matters, except my girls. Dad’s disease isn’t a mistake he made. It’s not his fault. Here, between us, this is my fault. It was a mistake that I thought was saving my own heart. I thought I was finding the love of my life, but I’ve never been able to forgive myself. How could I expect you to forgive me? Now what, Lena? Now what do I do?”

“I have no idea.” Colleen closed her eyes. “Except this—do not do what I did.”

Hallie almost smiled. “No, I can’t run away . . .”

“In a way you can. You can leave him. But you have family here, Hallie. A house. A home. Come back to it if you don’t want the internal war of living with Walter.”

The sisters sat quietly then, the voices of others rumbling past, a foghorn sounding far off and a baby crying from a stroller only a few feet away. But they didn’t hear any of this, not with full awareness. They merely sat together in the silence between them, the silence that finally, finally spoke of sisterhood.

“What about you, Lena?”

“What about me?”

“What if you want to stay? What if you want to be here, too?”

“Hallie, if that happens, we’ll figure it out. Don’t use me as an excuse not to end your marriage.”

Hallie took in a gasp as if she’d been hit in the solar plexus. “Yes, I’ve been doing that for far, far too long.”

Chapter Twenty-five

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

Cesare Pavese, The Business of Living; Diaries 1935–1950

FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE PARTY . . .

The johnboat tipped and bounced against the dock as Colleen, Hallie and Dad sat on the bench, so close together that their legs and knees pressed together. Shane sat solo on the driver’s seat.

“Did we get a smaller boat?” Gavin asked as Shane pushed down on the throttle and the small motor pulsed to form a wake like the V of white birds flying across a pewter sky.

“No,” Colleen said. Seated next to Gavin, she placed her hand on his knee as they tilted forward with the momentum. “We just grew bigger.”