I stand up and walk over to your bed, checking to see if your fever broke in the night. A bath might be a good idea, and some more of that hot tea Tom is constantly pushing on us. Thinking of Tom, I shake my head. I have to tell him. I have to ask him if you can stay here. No matter the circumstances, I know you could have a good life on these shores.

But when I check your bed, you’re gone.

Of course you are.

That’s why it’s so chilly in the room—the window is open.

When I Knew

How empty the lake felt the day Mary left me, how wide the sky, how alone that point of rock. My kayak drifted over to where the rocky bottom of The Point met the water, and the sound of the boat scraping against the granite was the loneliest sound in the world.

I didn’t know if your grandmother would come back, if we would find her, but I had a deep sense that she was gone forever. That I would not see her again. And in that despair, I wondered if I had the courage to climb The Point and jump headfirst down onto the rocks. Or perhaps sink down into the water and not come up again.

Only one thing kept me in the boat, caused me to lift my oar and paddle back to the cabin: your father, John. That tiny baby who I thought was probably crying back in the cabin, crying for milk, crying for his mother. That’s why I chose to live that day.

During the next two or three days, the whole town flocked to the lake, and I didn’t care if they did it out of curiosity or a morbid fascination with the idea of a missing person or because they genuinely wanted to help—the more people there, I figured, the better chance of finding Mary. But always there was this belief in me that she wouldn’t be found.

On one of those nights, Tom and Shirley and I sat in the cabin waiting for news. All of our parents were there, and one of them was holding John. He kept crying, so I took him and walked down the dock and stared into the darkness. I didn’t know how to tell him that his mom wasn’t coming back. He was still just over a week old, after all.

The early fall air was heavy, and the water was so still. Out on the lake I could see flashlights sweeping back and forth, at least twenty of them, like tiny, lost lighthouses. I wanted to call to them all, tell them it wasn’t any use. But as I stood there and watched, John stopped crying and started making these little cooing sounds. The stars wavered in the humid air, and that’s when I heard it.

Someone was shouting, but not in anger. It sounded like a wounded animal—a very large, dangerous animal that everyone would want to steer clear of. The cabin door was open, and inside I could see Mary’s father, barely able to stand up. He went from shouting to moaning like a woman in labor, and I knew the grief was too much for him. That’s when I did something really foolish.