After Ezra leaves for work, I head to Avril Island. The police called while I was eating breakfast and said they’d be by around noon. As I arrive back in the light of day, the night before just feels like a bad dream.

The morning couldn’t be more perfect. The lake is like glass, the only movement a duck cutting through its silky surface. The sky is a clear blue, not one cloud in sight. Dragonflies zip above me, catching early-morning bugs. Nothing could be scary in this setting.

I sit with my feet hanging off the end of the dock. The water is so still I can see right down to the round rocks and old logs that cover the bottom. The odd fish swims lazily through the underwater obstacle course.

It’s mornings like these that I remember from childhood. Looking back, it feels like every single one was like this. May and I would bring our cereal or toast down here, still groggy from sleep. We would have woken up, put on our bathing suits and maybe a pair of shorts. Grabbed some breakfast and a towel and headed down here. We’d eat in silence, both of us taking from the morning what we needed. Then we might go swimming if we’d woken up enough. Or lie on our towels on the dock in the sun—the boards already warmed with its heat.

My mother would come down at some point with her coffee and Baileys—a veritable force, upsetting the gentle morning balance of May and me. Wearing one of her bright, flowing bathing suit cover-ups, a bikini on underneath. She’d drop her tote bag beside a lounge chair and spread her towel out before shedding the cover-up.

Pulling out a tube of Bain De Soleil, she’d spread the orange tanning cream all over her already dark skin. The tropical-smelling substance enhanced one’s tan; it didn’t protect against it. Skin cancer was not a thing back then.

May often slipped off the dock at that point into the cover of the water, staying under as long as she could in the suspended, green quiet of submersion. I usually picked up my towel and moved it onto the lounge chair beside my mother’s and asked to use some of her tanning cream so that I could smell her on me all day.

So many mornings bloomed from this dock into days full of swimming, tanning, friends, sailing, cliff jumping, water skiing, and lazy afternoons in the hammock. So many mornings identical to this one but now so far out of my reach.