On the day of their mother’s memorial, Sam went back to the boat. The weather was still too hot. The passengers were rude, thoughtless, entitled. She wiped out the microwave after someone complained and processed a return for a coffee someone else had already finished. It didn’t matter. Her mother was dead. She and Elena were stuck in that house forever without their mom.

That was what Elena said, anyway. And Sam heard it but couldn’t fully absorb it. She’d spent eleven years telling herself the opposite; she would need at least that long to get Elena’s newest pronouncement through her head. “Sammy,” Elena had said, “we’re not going anywhere”—it rang over the sounds of the cash register and the spare change. The boat’s engine churned, and through its noise Sam heard Elena say those words again and again and again.

Early in their mother’s sickness, Sam and Elena traveled with her on this ferry in order to meet with a specialist. Her diagnosis, at that point, hadn’t been clear, and they went over these waters believing they would be greeted on the other side by a handshake, a pill, and a cure. Sam had thought that, anyway. She’d thought that sickness was a stomach bug, the sort of thing that takes a person down for forty-eight hours before they rally. She didn’t know how long and lonely disease could be.

Their mother herself must’ve been well worried to take a family trip to the mainland, but she didn’t tell them that; she was still working at the salon at that point, sucking polluted air into her damaged lungs. She acted like her usual self. Elena, Sam believed then, had been optimistic—she’d just started working at the golf club, and during the trip she told them about tourists on the green—but then again maybe she hadn’t been. Maybe Elena was already getting ready to mortgage their lives for that appointment and the many more to come. What did Sam know, really, of what had been in Elena’s mind? Whether she’d expected at that point for their mother to live one year or fifty? What had Elena and their mother said to each other, what forms were filled out or decisions made, while Sam was watching the widening ripples below?

Because that’s what Sam remembered: the water. Her mother sitting at a table on the passenger deck with her head leaning against a plastic windowpane, and the water, dark blue topped with white, rushing by outside. Elena and Sam sat across from her. Elena told another silly story. Their mother’s eyes were calm, her eyelids heavy, her forehead smooth. The boat rocked them forward.

Sam was still stuck on the same vessel. Their mother would never see that water again. Sam rang up another customer. Two cups of clam chowder, in this heat. Their mother was gone.

That afternoon, Ben came up to the galley. Sam saw him and glanced away. His body, yellow-vested, stayed in the corner of her vision. He waited for passengers to empty out before he approached the register. “Hi.”

“Hey,” Sam said. She’d hardly talked all day. The sound of her own voice was a surprise.

He was speaking low and tender. “How are you doing? I’ve been thinking of you.” Before today, he had used this voice with her only in private.

“Grand,” she said. “Thanks for checking in.”

He didn’t bat an eye. Grief put a thicker cushion between Sam and the rest of the world, making it so she couldn’t hear anyone outside her head and no one else could hear her. Probably she could scream without him flinching. “I read your mother’s obituary online. She sounded like a wonderful person.”

Vaguely, Sam remembered: Elena typing something up for the Journal. One of Elena’s many completed tasks. She had shown it to Sam before submitting, but Sam had only skimmed the text (…survived by her two children…) before handing Elena the phone back. On that screen, their mother turned into nothing but a high school graduation year and a collection of clichés. The obituary flattened her until no sign of her ever having really lived was left.

“She was,” Sam said. “She was incredible.”

“I wish I’d met her.”

Sam twisted up her mouth. “Why?”

Ben’s lips, the ones she’d spent this season pressing herself against, parted. She made herself look away. “Because I care about you,” he said. “I care about your life.”

Sam shook her head.

He pressed on. He had come up here determined, it was clear, to mend things between them. “It mentioned you guys are planning a memorial service?”

“You don’t need to do this,” Sam said.

She waved forward a waiting customer, and Ben backed away before eventually leaving for a lower deck. That evening, though, crossing the parking lot of the golf club, Sam did wish for the limited comfort of his presence. Elena had been short over texts the whole day. Sam was waiting for the message where Elena apologized and withdrew her declaration about their future, but it hadn’t yet appeared. Since their fight, Elena had been taking more showers and walks and time alone, while Sam sat at their kitchen table, avoiding looking at her sister’s paperwork and longing for the time when her family had seemed inseparable.

She wanted her sister back. Her mother. Someone.

Elena was standing in front of the club’s bar when Sam came in. They hugged each other. They were both in their regular work clothes, but Elena’s were more appropriate, Elena’s were black. People were milling around. “Mrs. Sheffer is here,” Elena said into Sam’s ear—their eleventh-grade history teacher. Sam turned to take the place next to Elena, but after a minute, Elena squeezed Sam’s arm. “Get a drink if you want one. Help yourself. There’s food.”

So Sam made herself a plate of pasta salad. She circulated. A good number of their old teachers were there. Their mother’s former co-workers, who embraced Sam when they saw her, and who smelled, nostalgically, like solvent. They poured out condolences. Sam listened close but their lungs sounded clear. A few people from the medical center had come, and some of the girls who used to hang around Elena in high school. Elena’s co-workers—Kristine, holding a tissue, was talking to the grill’s manager, the man who’d fired Sam way back when. Neighbors from their road were there, too. Danny Larsen and his mother. He waved; Sam waved back; she flushed and turned toward the food table.

She heard her mother’s name a time or two, but mostly, people were making small talk. They discussed the heat that weekend. Yet another sign of climate change, they said. They talked about deer in their gardens and community theater and vacations they wanted to go on. The latest spreading strain of the virus, new boosters required of the vaccine. Sam and Elena had spent the last two years worried about bringing home illness, but their caution at this point didn’t matter, did it? Sam’s mask was pushed into her pants pocket. She could stand carelessly in this crowd. In one corner, her mother’s co-workers bent together to show each other pictures on their phones of their grandchildren. Sam’s mother would never be able to do that. Sam put more salad on her plate. Across the room, by the bar, she could see the top of Elena’s head, the smooth blond fall of her hair.

“It’s killing pets,” someone near Sam said. “Etta Delaney told me their rabbit hutch was broken into. She’s worried sick.”

Someone else chimed in. “I told my husband he needs to stop going for long walks with the dog.”

And then a third voice, authoritative. “While bears can target small animals, it’s extremely unlikely that one would approach an adult man with a dog.”

Sam turned. Past two strangers’ shoulders, there she was: Madeline Pettit. It didn’t seem possible. Madeline was holding a plastic cup of red wine. She was in her uniform, embroidered patch and all. She told the women she was talking to, “Only twenty Washington bear encounters have resulted in human injury in the last fifty years,” and then caught Sam’s eyes, and pressed her lips together, and excused herself to her conversation partners. She slipped past people to come up to Sam. Level as ever, Madeline said, “I was so sorry to hear of your mother’s passing.”

Everyone gave this same apology to Sam. She hadn’t figured out yet what they expected her to say back. To this woman, especially—there was no reasonable response. Sam only said, “Why are you here?”

The compressed, solemn shape of Madeline’s mouth. “I was at Copper Kettle Farm this afternoon. They’ve been losing livestock. They mentioned your family, I told them we’d met, and they invited me to come offer condolences.”

The owners of Copper Kettle Farm…Sam couldn’t put that together. How had they known her mother? What had they said? And how could Madeline have accepted such an invitation, given by strangers, to this memorial for someone whom— “You didn’t even know my mom.”

“I know how destabilizing this can be. My own mother passed when I was in my twenties,” Madeline said. “I came to extend support to you, but if you feel it’s inappropriate for me to be here, I’ll leave.”

It hit Sam, then, the hot rush of humiliation: she was going to cry. Her eyes flooded. Her sinuses burned. She hadn’t cried since they found their mother; Elena had done the breaking down for the both of them; Sam had held herself in check these many days, and now, horribly, Madeline Pettit, of all people, was making her fall apart. She tried to talk, but saliva was thick in her throat, she couldn’t start. She had to try again. “Why.” Sam stopped. She wasn’t going to be able to get out the words. She turned away because she couldn’t stand for Madeline to see her like this. There were napkins stacked on a table; Sam grabbed at some.

What was awful got worse. She felt the small, warm shape of Madeline’s hand on her arm. “This is a difficult time,” Madeline said, low. “You’re overwhelmed. That makes people act without thinking. It’s completely understandable.”

Sam had the wetting napkins pressed to her cheeks. Her nose was clogged with snot. She cleared her throat, turned back, and looked at Madeline. She didn’t have it together enough yet to say, What are you talking about?, but she looked and hoped that Madeline received her meaning.

And Madeline did. She explained herself, steady and consoling. “Leaving food out,” she said, “baiting the bear, hoping he might approach you—those behaviors have to stop now. It’s time to focus on your family.”

Madeline thought Sam wanted the bear near her? Sam would give anything not to be crying in front of this person. How could she have ever imagined the two of them were tied? Madeline didn’t belong here, not at this event, not on this island, not anywhere where Sam would ever be—she should never have come—and if Sam could hold fast to that certainty, then maybe the tears would stop, but she kept losing her grasp. The crying kept on. Because her knowledge of Madeline’s wrongness was mixed up with some sense of betrayal. By Madeline or by Sam’s own self.

Madeline was so close to seeing the truth. When Sam was frightened, Madeline brought advice, bear spray. That canister ruined everything, yes, chased Elena out of the house on the night their mother died, but that wasn’t Madeline’s fault—or it was—or it wasn’t—Sam didn’t know, her eyes were swelling, she was undone. Sam had to get away, she knew, yet she had to admit too that when Madeline said she was here to give support, Sam’s impulse was to fall at her feet and wrap her arms around the biologist’s ankles. Madeline, she wanted to beg, protect us. My sister and I got lost in the woods. Please help us find our way home.

Throat clotted, Sam said, “You should go.”

Madeline nodded. Then she said, “Sam, if there’s anything about this that you need to sort out, write. Call.” She squeezed Sam’s arm, an even pressure. “I’m here to listen.”

Sam pulled her body back. After days of sleeping separated from Elena by cold inches and years-old lies, she found Madeline’s touch a comfort, and she hated herself for it, she hated the thin white nerves under her skin.

Madeline began to weave through the chatting crowd toward the club’s door. Sam pushed her hands against her cheeks to try to make these tears go back in. Then she followed. The only other times Elena crossed paths with Madeline, she’d blown up at Sam after; if Madeline said something to set off Elena now, it would be a disaster. Madeline’s ponytail bobbed toward the exit. Sam had to get between her and Elena. She shoved forward.

Bits of too-casual conversations kept catching at her. The state of the seaplanes used between here and Seattle, a duck laying eggs in someone’s big backyard. For the millionth time in her life, Sam wished, with all her aching heart, that everyone else, their small talk and demands, would disappear. No more teachers or neighbors or former classmates, no other ways of being in the world. Nothing. Only Elena and Sam, safe in their old silence.

Madeline was only a few steps from Elena, who was facing away, toward the club’s entrance. Don’t notice her, Sam prayed, don’t notice. Madeline, blessedly, passed. Only once the biologist reached the door did Sam see what Elena had been fixed on. Who had come in. Their mother’s old boyfriend had arrived.