They’re all things she would say if she were here right now, and I hear them as if she were. I look up into the night sky—a dome of blue black, dusted with Milky Way and heavy with glowing white stars.

A loon calls out in the distance—beautiful but sad at the same time. The lonely cry reverberates from one creature to another, like a radio signal of aloneness. I can feel the heavy weight of my own loneliness start to settle over me, so I turn and leave the dock, letting my mind wander over each bit of the evening I just had with Ezra.

The cottage glows warm from the lights we left on, and the music finds its way outside, beckoning me back as I make my way up the path. When I was a child, I’d come outside to stand on the path and look up at the bright cottage. The shadowy form of my mother would pass by several windows as she moved from room to room. My father’s shadow was a stationary silhouette as he sat in the living room, reading a book. My sister’s would often appear in an upstairs window, searching for me out in the night.

Back then I looked up at the cottage with a gratitude so deep I would not have been able to verbalize it. It was a refuge I saw before me, my favorite place in the world. A place where my mother hummed through her days in happiness. Where my father sat still and actually found a way to relax. Where my sister and I were free to roam and fill our days with sun, lake, and forest. Little did I know that secrets were being collected by those shadowy figures, secrets that would rip our family apart, extinguish those glowing lights, and keep me away from this island for almost thirty years.

MAY

June made it to her bed tonight, which is a good sign. To be honest, I’m surprised Ezra isn’t in there with her. It takes a strong man to refuse June.

I arrived when she was in the kitchen doing the dishes. I didn’t have to see Ezra to know he was there. I could feel the wound-up sense of attraction in June, the calm, contented focus she always gets when a man is around. It’s her brand of pheromones, and I know it well.

In the living room, Ezra was looking at some photos. I saw from the envelope that they were mine, the ones I’d kept hidden in the pocket of my suitcase. June must have taken it out from under the bed and gone through it. Can I be dead and still view this as a violation of my privacy? Does my life become everyone else’s property now that I’m gone?