I placed John down on the dock, on his back, and when I was no longer holding him, he started crying again, that sort of naked bleating that newborns will do, shrill and inconsolable. I climbed into my kayak, took him from the dock, and held him on my lap, and with one hand I half-heartedly pushed us out into the water.

I guess Mary’s father had heard John crying, because he came stumbling out onto the dock, followed by Mary’s mother and Tom and Shirley and all of our parents, a whole crowd, and the dock groaned under the weight. Mary’s father called out to me, and his voice was so confused I couldn’t tell if he was angry and coming after me or desperately sad and wanting some kind of consolation. I paddled out farther.

A loud splash broke through the night, followed by a few more splashes. Mary’s father had jumped in, completely clothed. I guess Tom had jumped in along with one of the other adults to haul Mary’s father back out again. He was wailing and crying, and by the fading of it I could tell someone was guiding him back around to the front of the house.

It was out there in the dark that I knew for sure. Mary was gone. I held John close and drifted for a long time on that black sheet of water, and eventually I managed to paddle my way back to the dock.

That’s when we packed, and the next day we left Nysa.

And I never came back, not until now.

This time, with you.

The Clouds Bear Down

I don’t even take time to put on shoes. I run barefoot through the woods like some prehistoric human, not caring that the branches are scratching my face, the briars tearing at my clothes. I have to get to the cabin. I’m not telling Tom this time, and I’m not taking the boat. I want to go there the way you do. I want to figure out, somehow, what is drawing you back time and again, what is pulling you from the house.

Within a few minutes, my feet are freezing cold and my breath pants out in a fog, but I don’t stop or go back. And there, among the poplars and the oaks with their changing leaves, the overgrown vines hanging like snakes, I find a trail I didn’t know existed. Is this how you get there and back? Is this how you go to the cabin? And why is this trail here in the first place? Did Tom and Shirley return there more often than Tom has led me to believe?

Rain begins to fall, and I hear the drops stirring the leaves around me, tapping on the hard dirt of the path. Through random clearings in the trees off to my left, I can see the western sky, and what I thought was simply a curtain of gray bringing rain looks more sinister than that—the edges of the sky are nearly green, and the clouds boil back on themselves. I run faster, scanning the lake, the woods, wondering how long it will take me to run to the cabin, or if this is even the right path.