Chapter 4: The Boathouse

The boathouse stood at the end of the dock, with its doors shut and a drift of birch leaves against the sill.

I waited ten minutes after breakfast, then told the table I was going for a walk.

Nobody asked to come. Vera blew me a kiss from the stove.

Inside, the air smelled of wet wood and gasoline. Two canoes hung from the rafters, and a space heater ticked in the corner.

Melina sat on an overturned bucket with a thermos between her knees.

She was holding it with both hands so it wouldn't shake.

"You came," she said.

"You said you were sorry. I want to know for what."

She looked at the floor.

"I've known you since you were nineteen," she said. "I held your hair back at Park Point. I should have told you a long time ago."

"Told me what?"

Her mouth opened and nothing came out of it.

I sat on a second bucket, close enough to touch her knee.

"Melina. Say it plain."

"Vera and Tyler," she said. "Fourteen months."

I heard the space heater tick four times.

"Fourteen months," I repeated.

"Since the week after he proposed to you."

I had been wearing the ring for two weeks when it started.

I thought of Tyler in the hallway of our apartment, taking my face in his hands and saying, I can't believe I get to marry you.

The feeling that came wasn't a scream. It was cold and clear and it went all the way through me.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Because I saw them, in her car, in a parking garage last March. She saw me see them."