Across the lake, a single yellow light suddenly came into view. The Barbara Marie. The light winked gold against the horizon, then grew larger and brighter.

“Sometimes I do, yes,” Kim said. On the nights when she made it through all her thoughts, when she reached all their furthest-away ends and it felt like her whole mind had been scooped out clean, she would shuffle out of bed, blank and witless as a newborn, make her way to a window, and look outside. In these moments, when the world shimmered like a miracle and nothing obeyed time, she could believe in all sorts of things. Fake moons. Gray Men who roamed beaches in search of broken girls.

Soon, voices could be heard, skimming bright and clear across the surface of the water. The Barbara Marie was a black silhouette, and small, shadowy figures bobbed and danced within it. One of the twins was hollering about fish guts, and the girls were laughing. Someone tooted the horn. It struck Kim that the difference between seeing through the dark and imagining that you could was so indistinct that perhaps there was no difference at all. Like the difference between opting into life versus not opting out of it. Though the children were still too far away and it was too dark to make out their faces, Kim lifted both her arms and waved.

EPILOGUE

Kimmy never stopped wondering if I knew I was drowning while I was drowning. Over the years, she asked it of our parents, her therapists, her friends, her boyfriends. She never got out from under it; she asks it to this day. The answer is, only for a moment. After I became aware but before it actually seized me, my mind went scuttling backwards, depositing me in a faraway time and place. If I could reach her now, I’d explain:

You were a scream before you were a face.

You were thrashing, purple, and wrinkled like a raisin. Not cute.

Mom said, “This is your little sister,” and asked if I wanted to hold you.

I hesitated, even though I had been eagerly anticipating your arrival for many months.

I said, “I’m scared.”

Mom laughed because she thought I meant that I was scared of you. But I wasn’t scared of you, I was scared for you. Already I knew that there were all sorts of ghastly, fearsome things in this world, and you were so small, I couldn’t imagine how you would ever survive them all. But I reached for you anyway—this was the last thought I had, the last feeling I felt before death, how in one instant the universe gave up all its secrets, showed its full hand, pulled back the curtain, and laid itself bare right before me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my wonderful agent, Michelle Tessler. Thank you to Helen Atsma, for your encouragement and guidance in raising and refining this manuscript, and to Larry Cooper, Jenny Xu, Emma Gordon, Lisa McAuliffe, Chloe Foster, Emily Snyder, Kimberly Kiefer, and Mark Robinson at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Thank you to Vi Dutcher and Eastern Mennonite University for a lovely office and supportive community. Last, my deepest gratitude, as always, to my friends and family, for the immense joy of sharing life with you.