“Yes, I suppose it is rather large,” he says. “Shirley always thought the place was too big.”

He pours two mugs of coffee and hands one to me. “Let’s drink it out on the deck,” he says, and it’s not a question, not really.

He moves steadily away, and I take a sip of the hot coffee, scalding my tongue. I glance at the doorway that leads down the hall that eventually winds its way to your room. I should check on you once more before I retire for the night, and I think of veering off, going to your room. But I don’t. I follow Tom through the unlit living room, through the glass doors, and outside onto the deck.

I’m surprised by how warm it is tonight at the edge of the water. I sit down in the same spot as the night before.

Out of nowhere, I think of the doctor who gave me the diagnosis. What is she doing tonight—sitting on a porch with her husband, enjoying one of the last warm nights of fall? Perhaps drinking a glass of wine? I wonder if she thinks of me at all, if my diagnosis weighs on her, or if, when she closes the file folder, she forgets about me. I hope she thinks of me. I’m not sure why. It’s not romantic, this desire of mine to be thought of by her. I think I want to know that someone else who knows about my diagnosis is swimming these dark waters beside me.

Tom doesn’t turn on the large floodlights—there is only a small porch light shining from the back door of the house. We sit among the slanting shadows, steam rising from my cup of coffee. Above us, the stars are bright, and the forest sounds very alive.

“Pearl is . . .” he begins.

“Yes?”

“She’s . . . quite the little girl.”

“That she is,” I reply. A breeze picks up and swirls a few leaves around on the deck.

“When we got back tonight, she asked me if I would teach her to swim.”

“Really?” I ask.

He nods, laughs to himself. “She said she needed to swim the entire lake, that she wanted to soak it all in.”

“That sounds like her.”

“Is that okay with you?” Tom asks.

“If you teach her to swim? Or if she swims the entire lake?” We both chuckle. “I don’t mind.”

I picture the two of you in the water, Tom holding you afloat, and an ache soaks into me. But this is why I came, isn’t it? This is why I dragged you across the country, over the bridge, all the way into Nysa—to find you a new home, a new guardian. I reach up in the shadows and feel the lump. It feels almost like another lump is starting to grow right beside it, the size of a pea. The wind is knocked out of me.

Oh no.

“How was your evening?” Tom asks, interrupting my thoughts, sipping from his mug.