It’s of West coming up the path in the middle of the night, the moon lighting his way because my mother hadn’t turned on any lights. We both stood there watching him come—there was a sense of relief at his arrival for both of us, but I don’t know why. It’s out of place and strange to have him arrive under the cover of night. There’s a sense to the memory, that it’s tied to something bigger—the secret that I’ve buried down deep and which thankfully has yet to surface.

If that’s the case, then it means that my mother and West were involved in the secret as well. This fact makes it all even more unsettling. What was West coming here to do in the middle of the night? And why was it me along with my mother standing there waiting for him, relieved at his arrival?

June goes into the cottage once Ezra’s boat has driven away from the dock, and I follow. She wanders into the kitchen, gets a glass of water, and sits down with it at the kitchen table. I should be sitting across from her. We’d open a bottle of wine or make some tea and eat our way through a bag of cookies while we talked. We’d solve all the problems or at the very least find a way to laugh about them through the tears.

And now she sits alone. I circle around her, hoping my motion will make waves of something that she’ll pick up on. Passing by the kitchen window, through a beam of moonlight, I feel that tug again, the sense of solidity I got the first night I was here. I pause, soaking up whatever power the moon is giving off.

June looks right at me. She squints her eyes and leans forward. “May?”

Yes, I scream. Yes. I make the mistake of moving forward, out of the moonlight, and the solid feeling disappears. I shift back, but by then June has put her head in her hands and is gently shaking it back and forth.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says out loud to herself. “She’s gone.” The last words are a mere whisper. She stays like that for a while, looking as though she’s in some kind of sorrowful prayer, her head still bowed.

I move around in the moonlight, hoping something will catch her attention again. She must have seen me or at least a flash of me. June, June, June, June, June, June, June … I say it over and over again, but she’s doing everything to block it out.

June. This time I use every bit of energy I have to scream her name. She pulls her head from her hands and sits up but keeps her eyes averted from me and the moonlight.