It was an intense, passionate relationship. I mistook his understanding of my writing as understanding of me and naïvely thought I’d met my soul mate. We eloped. I was only twenty-four. He talked about babies, about having a family. I got caught up in the idea, and before I knew it I was the mother of twin girls, my writing career had come to a complete halt, and I was spending my days being a wife and mother. I never resented the girls for it, though; I resented myself for giving up too easily.

Once I’m off the phone, the silence of the cottage pulses all around me as though it’s holding its breath, hoping I won’t notice the secrets spread throughout. Hoping I won’t open its cupboards and drawers to go searching.

I push up off the couch, easily shedding the bad-mother feeling that the phone call gave me, and head upstairs to go looking for proof of my mother’s affair.

I go through every drawer in my parents’ room but don’t find anything of significance. What I do find is a photo of my mother that May took. It’s in the drawer of the bedside table that my father used. A candid shot, reminding me of how May used to sneak around this island, stealing moments from all of us with her camera. It’s more dramatic when you don’t know it’s being taken, she’d say, in an attempt to justify the unapproved shots. We all found it extremely annoying, but I realize now that some of her photos might hold the clues I’m looking for.

May used to keep all of her cottage photos in an old suitcase in her room. It’s not out in the open, so I go to her closet. A handful of dresses and a terry cloth robe still hang there. I can’t resist the urge to bring the robe to my face and breathe in its scents—mothballs and suntan lotion.

A vision of May walking down the path to the lake in front of me, wearing that robe over her bathing suit, instantly comes to mind. The morning sun is high and the lake is like glass, and we are wasting no time getting there. We will spend the day in and out of the water and stretched out in the sun on lounge chairs and leave the dock only when the sun is fading. I let the robe go, the pain of the memory slicing through me too deep to let me linger there.