A lump of emotion rose in Nate's throat as he watched his friends encourage Marisa. How had he gotten so lucky, to call these people his friends?

He didn't know what he'd do without them. Amazing, considering a year before, he'd barely known Brady and wouldn't have been able to pick Sam out of a lineup.

Funny how life worked out.

Marisa squeezed Rae's hand and looked at him. "Ready?"

"Yeah." He slid on his coat and pushed open the back door for her.

The air was crisp. The sun glittered off the glassy lake like a sea of jewels. The birds twittered a frivolous melody. Under different circumstances, today would be the perfect March day. Marisa stepped onto the dock. Not much of a walk, but Nate didn't care. As long as he was with her.

And that was the kind of thought he needed to banish.

The cabins on either side had similar docks, but this was the only one connected to the patio and the house. The other cabins hadn't been built so close to the water. He imagined a summer evening when everybody was out. Kids swimming, grown-ups sipping cocktails, a radio piping nostalgia across the airwaves, the scent of grills and burgers tickling noses and setting stomachs to grumbling.

None of that today, though. Just he and Marisa and the singing birds.

Marisa leaned her elbows against the railing and looked out at the lake beyond. The water reflected the deep blue of the sky. The tall pines joined maples and oaks that stretched empty arms to the sky. Puffy clouds drifted on a slight breeze above. In the distance, the zzzm of a motorboat barely reached them.

"It's beautiful," Marisa said. "I wish I had a sketchbook. I'd love to try to capture this place."

"Try to? I've seen your work, Marisa. It's amazing."

"It's just a faint reflection, though. Nobody knows the real colors, the true shadows and lines. We see it through our own..." Her words faded, and she turned to face him.

All the beauty around him, and he couldn't take his eyes off her.

"We see the world through our own prisms," she said, "separating perfect oneness into different categories like a prism separates light. Doing that helps us understand things, I think. But it also takes away from the whole. Back in art school, professors would teach us techniques for capturing what we saw and transferring it into whatever medium we were using. It was helpful—don't get me wrong. But it was separating a beautiful still life into lines and colors on a palette. That's what we do as humans."

Nate tried to concentrate on what she was saying and ended up staring at her perfect lips as they formed the words. He shook his head and looked at the railing, the water. "I'm not sure I follow."