Carefully I stood up in the boat and made my way forward until I stood over Peggy. She sensed by the boat’s motion that I had come forward, and, eyes still closed, she smiled.

I knelt carefully over her and kissed her, feeling her warmness against me, holding her to me for the last time.

“We’re going to be so happy, Mike,” she murmured.

“Sure we are. Sure.”

I ran my hands over her smooth body in one final caress and kissed her. She shivered a little and drew me close; I backed away.

I took a measured swing and cracked the side of my hand against her adam’s apple. She gasped; her eyes opened and she tried to say something. I hit her again.

Then I lifted her, pressed her warmth to me for the last time of all, and let her slip over the side of the boat. She slid gently into the water, without struggling, I hope without knowing what was happening.

She seemed to float just near the surface for a long time, motionless, graceful even in death, a lovely full-breasted statue of a woman drifting in the water. Finally she began to sink. I watched her.

Her naked brown body looked curiously pale as it dropped deeper and deeper, and finally she was totally out of sight and gone.

So long, Peggy, I said to myself, and began to row back to the cabin…alone.

* * *

The rest of it wasn’t as hard to do, but it took a great deal more care. I gathered up as much of her stuff as I could—the swimsuits, the lace-trimmed underwear, the bras and play shorts and the stationery box, and got it all together in the middle of the cabin. Everything she had brought with her. It made a little heap in the middle of the cabin, and I scoured every inch of the place to make sure I had it all.

Then I went through the stuff and burned everything with her name or any sort of identification on it. I gathered the ashes together, put them in a little jar, and set them aside. After that I packed the remaining things into her suitcase, making sure I’d pulled off her nametag, and added ten or fifteen pounds of rocks from the beach, just in case.

There it was: a suitcase, and a jar of ashes, and that was all that was left of Peggy. I got back into the rowboat and rowed a quarter of the way across the lake and dropped the suitcase over the side. It sank fast. Another fifteen oar-strokes further on I heaved the jar of ashes over, watched it vanish in the depths.