“I didn’t want them to know you were causing an international incident.”

“Fine,” said Kate.

Those were the last words they spoke to each other for the rest of the day. The kids came. There seemed to be some kind of tension between Finn and Nicki, but Walter didn’t pay attention at the time, and didn’t find out until weeks later that Nicki had spent the night with Finn’s boyfriend. All he could think about was Kate disappearing between those rocks, and how part of him wished she had never been recovered, that the Coast Guard had just said, “Oh well” and headed back to Houghton. He wished he had jumped off Harry’s boat and swum to shore. He wished he had pulled Kate out from between those rocks and carried her over his shoulder to the crumbling lighthouse and just stayed there, forever. But it was such a small part of him. He was angry at Kate for wanting something more than she wanted to be a part of this family. But he was also angry at himself for not wanting the same things that she did.

—

“As far as I know, you guys never found out that Kate didn’t actually fall off the roof,” Walter says now to Shawn and Katriina, who have been sitting silently in the cockpit of the Veronica, listening to him tell his story. “The Coast Guard impounded the Miss Penelope for three weeks, while the charges against Kate were pending. Eventually the Americans dropped all the charges except for trespassing, and Kate was fined fifty-five hundred dollars in an out-of-court settlement.” He pauses. “They also ordered a psychological exam.” How long would they have gone on without knowing, Walter wonders, if she hadn’t been evaluated? Would they have just continued on, oblivious to the changes happening gradually, unobserved, Kate just slowly fading away to a shadow of her former self? At what point would they have rung the bell, called the game, admitted there was something wrong? Knowing the Parkers, Walter thinks, probably never.

“What was the diagnosis?” Katriina asks quietly.

“Frontotemporal dementia,” says Walter, checking the depth finder as the GPS warns they are approaching a shoal. “Symptoms include loss of semantic understanding, social awareness, and executive function.” He still has the pamphlet they gave him at the hospital, stuffed into the glove compartment of his truck – he didn’t read it, but he remembers those words. Semantic understanding, social awareness, executive function. Things that make a human being a human being. “It won’t affect her long-term memories,” the neurologist had told him. “Just her ability to understand them.” Walter still isn’t sure he has heard of anything sadder.