I guess some things remained the same—Tom and I spent much of the weekends fixing up the old place, painting and repairing. Most evenings we took the kayaks out onto the water, drifting into the late dusk, watching bats swoop down over the water, their wings scraping the thin skin that otherwise provided a perfect reflection of the gathering night. We’d sit out there on our small boats, paddles resting on our laps, listening to the sound of fish gently rustling the surface.

“Does it get better than this?” Tom asked as we watched the sun dip down in the west, dropping behind the trees, beyond the fire-orange water reflecting it.

No one answered for a long time, because we all knew the answer.

“You okay, Mary?” I asked, looking over my shoulder. I paddled back to her when I saw how far away I had drifted. I reached out my hand to her and she took it, pulled me and my kayak close. Our boats bumped together. Her stomach filled the opening.

“Only a few more weeks, Mary,” Shirley said, something wistful and faraway in her voice.

I couldn’t look at her without getting choked up, without being bowled over in a wave of joy and uncertainty and fear and hope. A dad. I was going to be a dad.

“I sure hope that baby looks like you, Mary,” Tom said.

“Hey!” I said, using my paddle to send some water his way.

He shouted at me, laughing.

Even though we were far from shore, I could hear the crickets chirping. Early summer fireflies blinked in among the trees like a thousand lighthouses, each trying to guide us home.

“Aw,” Mary said, smiling, staring up at the navy-blue sky where the stars had begun peeking through. “I hope he takes after Paul.”

Shirley laughed her joyous laugh. “How do you know it’s a boy, Mary? Better not get set on one or the other.”

“I just know,” Mary said so quietly it was almost a whisper.

“There’s Orion,” Tom said. “There’s the Big Dipper. And there’s Cassiopeia.”

“Where’d you learn all this stuff, hon?” Shirley asked.

Tom didn’t reply, and we all stared up into the sky, searching it, as if there in the combination of stars we would find our future spelled out to us, plain and simple.

“What do you want to do with your life, Paul?” Tom asked, his words coming smooth across the black water.

“Do with my life?” I repeated. It was something I didn’t think too much about. I had Mary, a place to live. I made enough money for now. I wasn’t sure what else there was to be thinking about.

“Yeah!” Tom continued. “What do you want to do? You’re not going to spend the rest of your life on a typewriter, are you?”

Somehow it felt like a mean question now that he was pressing the point.

“I don’t know, Tom,” I said. “I figure it’ll come to me.”

Tom laughed, and there was something spiteful in his voice. Something derisive. “Oh, Paul,” he said, and I felt like I was about six years old.