In the stillness of the night, we were always able to hear our mother’s approach. The sound of the boat carried across the calm water and through the open windows. It was a high hum as she sped across the bay, then became a low rumble when she slowed down near the dock and a soft put-putting before the engine cut out completely. I was always safely in my own bed by the time I heard the creak of the screen door.

May and I read sounds at the cottage the way blind people read braille—to understand what was happening and prepare for what was coming next. Screen doors opening and closing, music playing, ice clinking against glass, creaks on the stairs, the rumbling of arguments between my parents like thunder from deep within the sky—all of them were instructions on how to orbit my mother: stay away, come close, come close but not too close. Those sounds were our points of sail in a windstorm.

As in the other bedrooms, the sheets are still on the bed, tucked in tightly at the corners as though just waiting for their occupants to return. The place was closed properly in every other respect—water and electricity turned off, fridge cleaned out—but it’s like we forgot about the bedrooms. I wonder if my mother was planning on returning. Was it the grief over my father’s departure that kept her from ever coming back? And if that was the case, then why didn’t she just sell the island? The futility of these questions, with everyone in my family gone, exhausts me.

The quilt at the end of May’s bed is lavender and white. I unfold it, give it a good shake, and wrap it around me—ignoring the musty scent. Lying down on her bed, I stretch my legs up onto the slanted part of the ceiling above me like I used to. My muscles sting slightly with the pull of it, and I feel foolish. I slide them back down and curl up into a ball with my head on the pillow.

Holding my breath, I listen for something familiar, for some sound to ground me to this place, but the creaks and buzzes are foreign to me. Avril Island has changed with age just like I have. The loneliness of it thuds around my chest like a trapped rat. I miss my girls. I miss May. I miss my youth.

Tears begin to leak slowly from my eyes, and I don’t stop them. I just lie there, letting the pillow soak them up. I’m too tired to get up, too tired to try to escape the sorrow. And I have nowhere to go. I’m on an island in the middle of a lake in the dead of night with nobody here to interrupt my grief.