Summer was camps and a trip to Daniel's cabin near Grand Lake, mosquitoes and a dock and Carol trying, with visible effort, not to watch Rachel as if Rachel might steal the silverware of the family trust. Richard taught Sophie to skip rocks. Megan arrived for two nights with sunscreen and a willingness to be the fun one. On the second evening the adults drank beer on the dock while Sophie read in the cabin with a flashlight and the stuffed ray, now named Douglas for reasons no one could reconstruct. The sky went peach and then indigo. Somewhere a loon made its ridiculous, holy sound.
Carol said, to the lake rather than to her daughter, "I still don't know how you looked at all of us and opened that door."
"Mom," Megan said.
"No," Rachel said. "She can ask." The dock moved slightly under them, a floating truth. "I didn't look at all of you. That was the mechanism. I made the world small enough to hold only what I wanted for one night, and I told myself the rest of you were safe inside a different day. Jason was supposed to be a tomorrow. Sophie was supposed to be asleep at Megan's original plan, before the surprise changed the math. You were supposed to be in Boulder, proud of me from a distance. I edited you out so I could stand the woman I was being. When the lights came on, the edit failed. You were all still real. That's what I can't unknow. You don't have to comfort me about it."
Carol's pearls were not there. Without them she looked more like a person and less like a verdict. "I was proud of you from a distance," she said. "That's part of what broke. The distance. I thought you were fine because your kitchen was beautiful."
"I thought I was fine because I could describe my feelings without changing them." Rachel looked at Jason, a silhouette against the last light, bottle loose in his hand. "I'm trying to change them by living where you can see me. It's slower than an apology. I know."