Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“Shawn…”
“You can leave,” he says, his voice soft. “This isn’t your problem anymore.”
Behind him, the television is showing footage from the helicopter again, the boat a tiny dot crawling across a span of blue. Somewhere in that tiny dot is Kate. The woman who saved Shawn. Who raised him to be the man he is.
“Of course it is,” she says.
By the time they catch up to Walter, he is already on the Veronica, with the engine running. “What are you doing?” Shawn asks as they step out onto the dock.
“I know where she’s going,” Walter says, starting to untie the ropes. “I’m going to go get her.”
“I’m coming with you.” Shawn climbs up onto the boat before Walter can stop him. Walter watches him silently for a moment and then goes back to the rope.
Katriina stands at the end of the dock. The Veronica’s engine is sputtering, kicking up a small wake that rocks her gently back and forth. The bumpers are up, the lines are untied, and Katriina has only a split second to make her decision. A split second, and then everything changes. So many moments that cleave our lives in two.
“I’m coming, too.”
THIRTY-THREE
One Saturday morning in October, almost nine years ago, Walter woke up to find Kate and the Miss Penelope gone. It was the fourth time he almost lost Kate, if anyone was counting. He still isn’t quite convinced he didn’t lose her that day.
He waited for an hour for her to come back, pacing across the dock, feeling powerless. The Serafina and Veronica were already in dry dock for the winter, and without a boat he felt stranded. Nicki’s girls were still asleep, though Nicki herself was nowhere to be found. But Walter didn’t want Finn or Shawn to know what had happened, so he woke a neighbour and asked her to stay with the children. Then he called his old friend Harry Hatt, who he had worked with at the Ministry of Natural Resources, and asked if he could borrow his boat. When Harry got the whole story out of him, he told Walter he would take him out himself.
Harry picked him up and they sped back down the Kam to the mouth of the river and out into Lake Superior. Walter tried several times to hail Kate on the radio, but no one was answering. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t know how to use the radio, but he figured it was worth a shot – he hadn’t thought she would have known how to steal a boat either, and yet here they were. She hadn’t been on the lake since she fell through the ice. Forty years of avoiding Lake Superior, of watching it warily from afar while her family swam, boated, and fished in it. What had happened?