Ezra takes his time driving back to Avril Island. The moon is full in the sky and reflects off the water, which is now inky black in the darkness. We pass cottages lit up from within, the light glowing warm, reflected off wooden walls, the dark silhouettes of their occupants moving around inside. This was always my favorite time to go for a boat ride—sliding through the night, being a voyeur, catching glimpses into other people’s cottage lives.

Nearing the dock, Ezra tells me he arranged to stay over if I want him to. I do. The thought of having company through the night is very appealing, and I’m relieved that my confession didn’t scare him away.

We’re in no rush, since we have all night, so we sit on the end of the dock with our legs in the water and drink some more wine. We hurry to fill each other in on all the years we missed. His are stories I’m hungry to hear, and he leans into mine with the same interest. When we were kids and we saw each other for the first time at the beginning of summer, we didn’t run off to play. We found some quiet place to sit and caught each other up on everything that had happened over the winter, and it’s the same now, only this time we have thirty years to cover.

The wine has long been finished and I’m suddenly desperate to get out of my mother’s dress and into something more comfortable, so I suggest heading up to the cottage.

It’s dark and quiet inside, but I don’t rush to turn on any lights or music. The stillness wraps us up in it and makes the rest of the world suddenly disappear. Without saying anything, I take Ezra’s hand and lead him upstairs to my room.

We move up against each other, and lips brush lips. He unzips the back of my dress, and as soon as it hits the floor, I kick it away. He slides the underwear free of my hips, and I reach around and release myself from the black bra, pulling him toward the bed as he divests himself of his own clothing, I don’t think of my mother or the things she did. I think of nothing but Ezra.

No words and no light make everything slow right down, infuse every detail with intention and meaning. The creak of the bed as we lower ourselves onto it, the exhale of breath, the soft whisper of skin against skin, the wind through the trees just outside the window. Our years of friendship and separation suddenly culminate into something so much more.

MAY

When I materialize, it’s in the upstairs hallway. I’m alone, but I know June is on the other side of her bedroom door. It’s the first time I’ve arrived apart from her. The cottage is quiet, but there’s a sense that it’s the stillness after an event. The air still pulses with the electricity of action. Not details I would have noticed when I was alive, but dead you feel it all.