Inside, the house is dim, and dust scuttles through the light from the windows as I disturb the still air. I walk into the kitchen and tuck my story away into a crevice between the fridge and the counter, frowning. Then I make dinner for me and my mom: two peanut butter and banana sandwiches, some steamed peas because you have to eat vegetables, Twinkies for dessert. I use a chair to climb up to the top shelf over the counter and dig out some chocolate sauce to drizzle onto the Twinkies, scarf my meal down—dessert first—and then put everything else on a tray and carry it up two flights of stairs.

In the slanted attic room at the end of the third-floor hall, my mom sits at her computer, typing notes from a thick reference booklet, her long black hair tucked behind her ears. Her desk is littered with sticky note reminders: Work Eat. Take your vitamins. On her hand she has scribbled in pen simply the word “Rosie.”

“Dinner,” I say, laying the tray down on the side of her desk. She types for a few more minutes before noticing I’m there. For her job, she does something mind-crushingly boring called data entry. It’s mostly typing things from books onto a computer and sending them to her boss, who lives in New York. There is a sticky note on the corner of her computer where she’s written down the hours she’s supposed to be typing and the contact information of her boss; she never stops early or late.

Against one wall, a small TV stays on while she works, always on the news. Right now there’s a story about endangered polar bears that I know will break my heart, so I turn the TV off; Mom doesn’t seem to notice. She does that strange thing where she looks at me as if adjusting to the idea of me.

Then she turns her eyes to the window in dreamy silence. “He’s out there swimming, waiting for me,” she says.

I follow her eyes to the ocean. It’s the same old thing.

“Who, Mom?” But I don’t wait for an answer because there never is one. I used to think, when I was little, she was talking about my dad, a fisherman, drowned at sea before I was born. That was before I realized that people who were gone did not swim back.