He rose, winced in pain as he put weight on his bad foot. She knew it had been a long day on his feet for him.

She touched his scarred cheek. “I’ll go. I saw a bike up by the lodge. I just want to stand there. I’ll be right back.”

“But—”

“I can do it alone. I know you’re in pain. Stay with MJ. When I get back, we’ll put him to bed. I’ll show you the stuffed animals he can’t sleep without and tell you his favorite story. It’s about us.”

She knew that Matthew would argue, so she didn’t let him. This was her past, her baggage. She turned away from him and went up the beach stairs and climbed to the grassy land above. There were still several guests sitting on the deck at the lodge, talking loudly, laughing. Probably honing the fish stories they would take home with them.

She took a bike from the rack by the lodge and climbed on, pedaling slowly over the spongy muskeg, crossing the main road, turning to the right, toward the end of the road.

There was the wall. Or what was left of it. The planks had been hacked apart, pulled away from the stanchions; the ruined slats lay in heaps, furred with moss and darkened by years of harsh weather.

Large Marge and Tom. Maybe Thelma. She could imagine them gathering here in their grief, holding axes, splintering the wood.

She turned into the driveway, which was knee-high with weeds and grass. Shade siphoned away the light; the world was quiet here in the way of woodlands and abandoned homes. She had to slow down, pedal hard.

At last she turned into the clearing. The cabin sat off to the left, worn by time and the elements, but still standing. Alongside it, empty, sagging animal pens, gates gone, fences broken by predators, probably home to all kinds of rodents. The tall grass, threaded with bright pink fireweed and prickly devil’s club, had grown up around the junk they’d left behind; here and there she could see mounds of rusting metal and decaying wood. The old truck had collapsed, bowed forward like an old horse. The smokehouse was a pyramid of silvered, moldy boards, collapsed in on itself. Inexplicably, the clothesline remained, clothespins attached, bouncing in the breeze.

Leni dismounted, carefully set the bike on its side in the grass. Feeling more than a little numb, she headed toward the cabin. Mosquitoes buzzed in a cloud around her. At the door she paused, thought, You can do it, and opened the door.

It felt like going back in time, to the first day she’d been in here, with insect carcasses thick on the floor. Everything was as they’d left it, but covered in dust.