I don’t want him to say it. But I need him to say it.

“Tom.” That’s all I say. His name.

His face crumbles, and he holds it in his hands. His body shakes with sobs, but he doesn’t make a sound. He gasps once for air.

“I hit Mary, Paul.” He’s shaking his head, as if I’m the one saying it and he’s denying it. “Right above her ear.”

I stare up at the sky, now almost completely dark, and I feel like I’m spinning higher, higher, higher. I reach up and touch the knot above my ear.

“I didn’t even know she had gotten out of her boat, Paul. I guess she followed me up there to talk, to see what was wrong. Honest to God, it was an accident. After I hit her, she crumpled and sort of slid down over the edge of the rock, real gentle, and disappeared into the water.”

Tears ache in my eyes, but I can’t touch them. They’ll burn me.

“Shirley was in complete and utter shock. She couldn’t move. She sat there in her kayak, mouth open, like that guy in the painting. You know, The Scream? Even had her hands up on her cheeks. And I couldn’t move either. I don’t know why not. I should have jumped in right away, but I was frozen in place.”

The crickets are singing now, chirping, and I wonder how late in the fall they go, how cold it has to get for this lake to fall into silence. I picture Mary slipping under, and I try to imagine the silence that greeted her there.

“I waited too long, Paul. By the time I jumped in, she was gone. The water’s deep at The Point, and the underwater currents are unpredictable.”

“Shirley knew?” I ask, my voice trembling from the cold and the story.

“Shirley knew.”

I try to rearrange things in my mind now that I know. I try to change my perspective on the last forty years, the nature of your grandmother’s death, the years I spent away from here. I don’t know how to think anymore. If I didn’t know Tom and Shirley, did I even know Mary?

But I think of Pearl’s vision, of the story she told me about going through the water and seeing Mary in the white farmhouse beyond the shore.

Waiting for me.

“A month later, after a storm, I found her.” Tom’s voice is so far away now that I can barely hear him. I can barely see him. “I did some research on it. They say storms can dislodge bodies that have sunk to the bottom of lakes and ponds. She was bobbing against the bank. I buried her where I found her, right here, where my house is now. And you were gone. No one knew where you went. So I didn’t tell anyone that I found her. Not even Shirley.”

I stand up, and I’m surprised that I’m not angry. The only thing I can think about instead of his words are the words Pearl shared with me, the message Mary told her to tell me.