Do something, anything, you’ve never done before.

Mae steps into the first icy footprint. Bud bounds toward her. He has a small branch in his mouth, which he presents to her. She throws it and he chases it, brings it back. She throws it farther and off he goes.

To further calm herself, she tries to pretend she’s walking on a road, but it’s impossible to convince herself that the river is not the river, so she thinks, I’m walking on several feet of ice, and the ice is not going to break and I’m not going to die out here and I have to see if Gabe is out there because if it’s him, I need to ask him why. She takes another step. Another. Soon she’s made it, up the bank and over. The river hasn’t claimed her. She’s safe.

She approaches the shack and knocks. Silence. She tries the knob. It’s not locked. She pushes the door open. “Hello?”

Mae has never been inside this cabin; she wanted to, begged Gabe to take her there on his boat every spring and summer, whenever Jonah wasn’t home, but he would never do it. “Think of the worst place you can imagine, and multiply it by ten,” he said to her once. She had imagined someplace exactly like this, with its particleboard walls, cracked linoleum on the kitchen floor, dusty surfaces, grimy windows, some of them broken and boarded over, and the smell: dank, neglected, rotten. She trails snow behind her as she passes through the small rooms.

Down the narrow hall, she can hear snoring.

She finds him on a cot, curled up, his head on a stained pillow. Gabe’s hair is darker than it used to be and past his collar, thick. His face is covered in stubble. He’s older now, his face more defined and set, but he’s who he always was, who he was going to be when she knew him, at least as far as looks go.

She steps closer. He’s wearing a soft-looking navy hoodie and salt-stained Blundstones, and there’s a Hardy Boys book beside him, broken spined and splayed. She turns a slow circle. This was his room when he was a kid. And there’s something strange about it. Unlike the rest of the cabin, it’s clean in here. No dust. You can see out the window.

She leans in and it hits her: the smell of alcohol on his breath and skin. Her stomach twists upon itself and she’s out the door of the bedroom before she fully comprehends what she’s doing. She searches for kindling, relights the dying embers in the woodstove, heads to the kitchen to pour water into a chipped mug. It’s only when she’s standing at the threshold of his room again that she sees what she’s done, feels the muscle memory in her actions. She took care of her father, too, when he smelled that way. She could never stop herself. She’s about to turn back, to dump the water on the fire and put the mug back, but her footfall causes the wood beneath the linoleum to squeak. Gabe opens his eyes.

“What the . . . ?” he says. He squints. “Mae?”

“Hi.” Her voice is curt. Her heart bangs against her rib cage.

“What are you doing here? How are you here?”

“I walked. Here, take this.” She steps forward, but he doesn’t take the mug. He chuckles, and it’s that dry, familiar chuckle and it hits her directly in her racing heart, like he’s lobbed something at her and she’s caught it with her chest.

“But you would never walk across the frozen river. I’m dreaming, right?”

“Not a dream.” She shoves the mug into his hands. “Just drink it. Please.”

“Thanks.” While he drinks, she stands over him, motherly, then backs away. A safer distance.

He moves to the edge of the bed and stands. He’s taller now. There are faint lines around his eyes and the silhouette of a beard on his cheeks. He’s staring right into her, the way he always could. Her heart has recovered from the earlier blow and it rushes toward him as if no time has passed. She pulls back on it, hard. No.

“I saw you,” she says. “I thought it was your dad, but then Lilly told me he’s sick, and I realized it might be you and I came out here. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have.”

“Why was it stupid?”

When she doesn’t answer, he continues to stare at her as if still trying to determine whether she’s real.

“Are you drunk?” she asks.

He runs a hand back and forth over his stubble and looks up at the ceiling. “Not really. I saw Lilly at the hospital. She said I should come to the inn for dinner. Instead, I went to a bar.”

She feels it now: a flash fire as the shock wears off. Anger, first in her fingertips, then up her arms. “You . . . seriously? You saw her, got drunk, and now you want to come for dinner like nothing ever happened?”

He’s looking at a salt stain on one of his boots. “I don’t want to come to dinner. That’s why I left.”

“You stole from us. Then you disappeared. And you don’t want to come for dinner?” Her laugh is bitter. “This is ridiculous.”

“Stole,” he repeats, and his eyes are back on her. There’s anguish there now. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I took so much from you—”

“I don’t want an apology! I don’t care if you’re sorry! That’s not why I’m here. I want you to explain. Why would you steal money and leave, why would you do that to me, to us? After everything we did for you. After everything we—” She presses her palms against her cheeks and her fingers over her eyes to stop the tears. When she’s sure she’s okay again, she takes her hands away. “They would have given you the money, I’m sure, if you’d just asked. You were like family. And that’s why I can’t understand why you—”

“I didn’t steal any money.”

“Don’t lie. You never used to lie.”

“Lilly gave me money and told me to go. I didn’t steal anything.”

She narrows her eyes and looks into his. Incomprehension is all she sees. It scares her. “Stop this. The night you left, you went to the boathouse and you stole all the money from the safe. And then you took off.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Fuck you.”

“Mae—”

“You used me. You used my family. For years. You pretended you were someone you weren’t, my best friend, my everything—”

He’s touching her now, his hands are on her arms and she rears back, but the room is too small for her to get far enough away from him.

“Who told you this?” he asks her.

“My grandmother.”

The confusion on his face is replaced by slow realization. And hurt. “I see,” he says.

“She wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Right.”

“This is who you’ve become? You’re accusing my grandmother of lying?”

“All I said was ‘right.’ ”

“I know that sarcastic tone of yours. I know you.” As she says this, she realizes it isn’t true. She doesn’t know this person standing before her, lying. She never did. “Do you know something? I hate you. You disgust me.”

He flinches, but says nothing. She squeezes past him, tries not to touch him but doesn’t succeed, their arms brush. Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, and then she’s in the hall again, thank God. She hasn’t taken off her coat or boots so there’s nothing for her to do but head through the kitchen and out.

“Bud!” she calls, and he gallops around the side of the cabin. “Come.” Slam. She starts to run, forgetting her fear of the ice and focusing instead on her fear of the truth.