This trip home would have to be different. If the siblings were going to help their dad, they couldn’t ignore each other. But she damn sure wasn’t going to run to Watersend with open arms and magnanimous forgiveness. Cautiously polite would be Colleen’s goal—all for Dad.

Memories had originally kept Colleen away, and now that her dad might be losing his, she would return.

Chapter Four

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

When Colleen finally slept that night, she fell into fractured dreams of childhood: pleasant, filmy dreams of when it had been the five of them, secure in their family and fast in the absolute certainty of their love. Dad, Mother, Colleen, Hallie and Shane on the banks of the May River.

When she half woke before the alarm sounded, a memory of the languid Sundays they’d spent together lingered in the luminous space between sleep and wakefulness.

Dad had always taught her that the natural world revealed the face of God; that spirit lived in his creation. This was all Colleen knew about religion. While her friends went to church on Sundays in their frilly sundresses and patent leather shoes, Dad ensured that this family kept the Sabbath in the landscape surrounding Watersend. Gavin infused their family rituals with a sense of the divine. “As the Irish say, what fills the eye fills the heart.” Even now, his voice resonated in Colleen’s mind.

Each Sunday they would embark on an outdoor excursion: a trip on the johnboat through the secret alleyways of marsh and sea islands, their faces raised to the wind; a dockside lesson on casting the shrimp net; or maybe a hike through the nearby nature preserve, booklet in hand, to find and name the majestic birds that fluttered and flocked there. There were treasure hunts in the parks, kayaking in the estuaries, hikes to hidden ponds.

When Colleen had first relocated to New York, she’d awoken on Sundays with such a profound sense of loss that she felt as sick as if she had the flu. When she finally realized what was ailing her, she’d started walking through Prospect Park on Sunday mornings to capture at least some of what she’d lost. But it hadn’t been the same. Not one little bit.

The Lowcountry was a seductress, a holy and righteous one, but one nonetheless. She was irrevocably beautiful in her ever-changing seasons and personalities. She kept her secrets well hidden in the lush and meandering tidal river creeks that only a very few people knew their way around. Her dad was one of them—the waterways were as familiar to him as his own body: the river water his blood and the land his bones. It had been the same for Colleen.