I start to shake my head no, but instead refill my coffee, grab a coat and follow Frank outside. The cold instantly sobers me, and my eyes water. We walk across the big patio—which will soon be jackhammered up for the new gas line to the kitchen—and head to the left. Frank opens the decaying wood door to the fish house and shuts it immediately to retain what little warmth is inside.

As soon as the door shuts, I feel as if I’ve gone back in time, personally and historically. The fish house is really no more than a shanty: two rooms, no more than a couple of hundred square feet total, with a pitched roof. Two windows are on each side, but the back wall—which faces the lake—has a huge window. Rough-hewn planks line the outside and inside, and they are weathered gray, almost bone-white. Gaps are present in the planks, and near the foundation, I can see through the walls to the snow outside. Wind whistles through the gaps, and the ancient, single-pane windows are frosted over, intricate, lacy ice patterns visible on each frame like powdered sugar on beautiful Christmas cookies. The floor is concrete, but my dad had scattered hook rugs here and there. On one side is where my dad says they cleaned the fish, and in the other room is where they used to ice the fish and produce.

“I can’t believe this place is still standing, to be honest,” Frank says. “Your father refused to touch it. Maybe he knew something.”

This place was my dad’s man cave before there was such thing as a man cave. He didn’t use it to run away from my mom, but she had her gardens and he had his fish house. And he did refuse to touch it: the only thing he’d added was electricity and plumbing, including a tiny bathroom in a back corner, barely big enough to turn around in.

I take a seat on my father’s beloved daybed.

“Be careful,” Frank says. “Mice.”

I yelp and stand quickly. Frank walks over and whacks the mattress a few times with his hands. “No takers,” Frank says, “not that I would blame them. It’s nearly as cold inside as it is out.”

The daybed has seen better days. Make that decades. The scrolling wrought-iron frame is badly rusted, and the mattress feels as if it’s made of bricks. But, oh, how my dad loved to take naps out here.

Are you sleeping, Jon? my mom would yell from her gardens when we’d all returned from the beach, and the sun and fun would make us feel as if we could barely stay awake.

No, my dad would respond. Just resting my eyes.