Waking at dawn, I move slowly off the bed, make sure Ezra is still sleeping, and then soundlessly slip out of the apartment. The sky is gray and the heat has lifted. The bow of the boat cuts through the light fog that swirls across the surface of the still lake. I’m the only one out here, the sound of my motor a cruel interruption to the peaceful silence of the early morning.

The damage to Avril Island, seen in the light of day, pains me. I walk in a wide circle, taking in the wreckage, which spreads all the way out to the trees sitting on the periphery of the lawn. There is nothing salvageable, only the suggestion of what things once were—a black pile of remains. Standing there, I can hear the screen door open and slam shut, smell the musty pine scent that hits you as soon as you step inside, hear the creak of the floors, feel the metal doorknobs in my hands. No fire can burn those memories away, but the loss of their reality suddenly cuts through me, bringing me to my knees.

I put my head in my hands and cry yet again, wondering if I will ever run dry, the sound rising up in the quiet morning to surround me with the soundtrack of my own pain. I have lost so much but still have so much. It is a balance that both hurts my heart and fills it. I could have died in that fire, but I didn’t. I know my sister was there, that she helped me get out, made it possible for me to return to my girls.

The same sister who, Willa claimed, killed her own father. I don’t have to believe it. I could convince myself that it was the ramblings of a delusional old woman, but I don’t. Deep down I can see the truth in what Willa told me.

My father’s leaving us affected May in ways that it did not affect me. She was scarred from that night, and I never fully understood why—I do now. I felt it all along, the secret, like a tiny pebble caught somewhere in the fabric of our closeness. You can’t know someone as well as I knew her and not sense a secret.

I don’t feel anger, only sadness that protecting me kept her from protecting herself, from sharing the burden so that she wasn’t alone in it. For there is nothing I would not have shouldered for my sister, no secret I wouldn’t have kept, no pain I wouldn’t have shared.