She set the beer bottle on the built-in wooden bench and opened the rusted metal box that contained fishing equipment. The shrimp net lay puddled in the bottom tangled and damp. She withdrew the net and shook it out, droplets of water splattering across her cotton tank top and shorts, ones she’d found in the bottom drawer in her old bedroom. Who had used the net last? Dad never would have put it back in the chest so tangled and wet—it was a strict rule: clean it; dry it; wrap it.

Here was another hint that Dad’s brain was failing. Even as she stood on the dock and Hallie drove him there for dinner, those neurons were twisting; plaque was growing along the axons like moss between the stones of their walkway, slowly, inexorably.

Colleen hoisted the net onto her lap as she took a seat on the bench. Her fingers began disentangling it, pulling here and stretching there in an intuitive motion. If only she could do the same to her dad’s brain. If only she could reach in and . . .

“Lena!” his voice called out from across the yard. She waved at her dad and then stood as her nieces ran toward the dock, still wearing their tutus from the previous day. Rosie reached her first. “Will you teach us? Will you? Mom said you would.”

“Teach you what?” Colleen smiled at the sheer enthusiasm, uncontained and free.

“To throw the net.”

“Your dad knows how,” Colleen said with a bite of bitterness she wondered if the girls could hear.

“Not as good as you,” Rosie said. “Mom said so. You’re the best.”

Colleen held up the net. “Well, this one is too tangled to throw. We’ll have to do another one later or wait until it’s untangled.”

“It doesn’t work when it’s tangled,” Sadie said, tears forming in her blue eyes, eyes just like Walter’s.

The little girl’s words flew like the heron across the river, settling into the crevices of Colleen’s fear. It doesn’t work when it’s tangled.

Without thinking, Colleen drew the little girl to her and wiped away her tears. Surprised, Sadie at first went rigid and then flung herself off Colleen and against her sister. As Colleen contained her slight hurt at Sadie’s rejection, she heard Rosie say in a too-grown-up voice, “We’ll fix it, Sadie. We will.”

•   •   •

The dinner table was lively with overlapping conversations and the ringing laughter of two little girls who had their own jokes and method of communicating. Rosie engaged with Colleen, but Sadie still shrank back. Hallie had brought wildflowers, from the same roadside stand where Colleen had found the peaches, and set the bouquet in their mom’s favorite blue glass vase in the center of the table.