She’d heard about love at first sight, of course. She’d read about it. But she hadn’t believed in it until Walter. They didn’t fight. They didn’t disagree on anything that caused more than a moment’s pause—he didn’t like avocados and she put them on everything; she despised salmon and he knew twenty-five ways to cook it. But even those small things had made them laugh. “Let’s eat avocado and salmon every night to prove our love,” he’d once said.

That evening as she walked toward him on the dock, Colleen felt her heart quicken. Something was different—his shoulders set back and a determined smile on his face as if he were posing for a photograph. When she reached him, he took her in his arms. “This is your favorite place in the world, right?” he said.

Look how well he already knew her.

“Yes,” she said and kissed him. “Here, and the pub.”

Then he dropped to one knee as if she’d written a childhood play about a romantic proposal, and he’d read it. “You are the woman for me, Lena Donohue. I love you, and you alone. I never dreamed I’d meet someone like you. All the days I have, I want to spend them with you. Will you please spend the rest of your life with me?” Then he handed her a perfectly gorgeous aquamarine ring, square cut with tiny diamonds surrounding it because somewhere along the way she had casually mentioned that she didn’t want a big diamond and adored aquamarines.

“We will stay here in this magical land, create our own little family. You won’t have to leave your river, and I will never leave you.”

Colleen dropped to her knees also. They would always be a team, just like her mother and dad: equals. And it would begin with her in front of him, not looking down at him. The sun set just as she said yes. He’d timed it perfectly. And somewhere in the yard, Mother took the photo that Walter had asked her to snap at just the right moment.

It was a photo Colleen had had printed the next day and placed in a silver frame to set on her bedside table. On the wedding day, after she’d returned to the house to grab the suitcase she’d packed for their honeymoon to Napa Valley, she’d thrown that picture into the river.

Chapter Seven

Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Lena.” Her dad’s voice called out and Colleen turned to smile as he headed toward her. He appeared as he always had—robust and on fire, his cheeks ruddy and his grin wide, his clothes loose and his steps longer than his short legs gave the impression they could be.