June had always plunged right in, cannonballing as a young child, diving when she got good at that. I’d always waded in slowly from the shore, introducing each body party to the water until I was up to my neck and then finally acclimatized enough to drop under the surface. An accurate analogy of our personalities all through life, I now realize.

As she sat on the dock after her swim, her eyes locked on the evolution of sunset before her, tears slowly began to slide down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away. I knew those tears were for me and I couldn’t do a thing about it, which felt more painful than any death.

Fortunately, she didn’t sit long with the grief. She drained what was left in her glass and got up to make her way back to the cottage. Inside she poured herself another glass, set it carefully down on the coffee table, and then flopped onto the couch with a tired groan.

Now her eyes slowly roll closed, and she turns onto her side and curls up into a ball, not even bothering to discard the damp towel. My mother would have been mortified to see her on the couch in her wet bathing suit. I can almost hear her: June Bennett, you get off that couch right now and into dry clothes. Sacré bleu! My mother always added a French curse at the end of a scolding. It was involuntary, she said.

June begins to snore softly. It’s been almost a full day, and I’m still here. Maybe I’m getting stronger. Maybe soon I won’t disappear at all. It’s hard to say, and I still don’t understand it at all.

I’m not really sure what to do with myself now that June is sleeping. As if I’m testing a new superpower, I start to slowly drift away from the couch, moving first into the kitchen. A mouse is chewing into the plastic of the bag of bread that sits out on the counter but stops suddenly with my arrival and quickly skitters through a thin crack in the wooden paneling of the wall. Was it a mere coincidence, or could it sense me?

Moonlight streams into the picture window that looks out onto the backyard. Passing through it, I feel a strange tug, as though I suddenly have some density to me, so I stop and linger there, enjoying the sensation of it. Thinking this must be how a child learning the world for the first time feels, not sure what anything really means, finding new sensations at every turn with no background information to apply.