Colleen absorbed all of this in the time it took to blink twice, and then it was the tree house her gaze sought by instinct. Nestled between the branches of an old oak, the tree house was tilted, half-drunk. The roof had long ago collapsed. Dad had once mentioned fixing it up, bringing it back for the nieces, but nothing had happened except that the tree reached higher, and the house inside of it had warped with the growth. Colleen turned away, feeling the swish-wash of sorrow for all that was lost. Then her gaze found the dock of her memories and dreams, hovering over the pewter water.

She found herself at the end of the dock before she knew she’d decided to walk that way, sitting with bare feet dangling and her red high-tops by her side. A midday shower threatened in the gray clouds that blurred the horizon like a flock of black birds. The water crested and fell to the rhythm of an outgoing tide. It was all so familiar, so achingly familiar. Would it always be this way for her dad or would even this place become strange, just another dock, another river, another tide? Things were special in their specificity to the soul, this much she knew.

This was where her childhood had taken place, where her dad had taught her to throw the shrimp net and fish with live bait. This was where she’d experienced her first kiss, where her mother had told stories of mermaids and sea creatures that Colleen believed in longer than she believed in Santa Claus. This was where Walter had proposed . . .

With a jolt, she stood and wrapped her arms around her belly for protection, as if the memory could punch her.

•   •   •

Walter stood at the far end of the dock, his hair awash in twilight and a big smile on his face. Colleen walked toward him, wondering how she’d been so lucky as to love a man like him. Sure, she’d had her fair share of good-looking and wonderfully goofy boys in high school and college, also experiencing heartbreak and angst that echoed a Taylor Swift song, but Walter was in a category all his own: both funny and sincere, both manly and sensitive. They’d met at a fund-raiser for a museum in Savannah and had barely left each other’s side during the six months they’d been dating; an invisible cord connected them.