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“Whatever.”

“You should talk to her,” Silas went on. “Ask her questions. Girls like it when guys ask questions.”

“Can we not talk about this?”

Silas jostled his son’s shoulder. “The opposite of that.”

Sean shifted on the polyester cushion. “I don’t even understand why she’s friends with Mickey. She’s older, and she’s popular. It’s weird.”

Silas put his hand on his son’s neck and gave him a shake. His neck was wet with sweat, the collar of his T-shirt damp.

“Maybe the Harrisons are more hip than you thought.”

Sean shrugged out from his grip.

“How about you go join them for a swim before dinner? I bet the water feels nice.”

“I’m set,” he said. He got up before Silas could say anything more, and the screen door slammed shut behind him.

“Good talk!” Silas yelled, his hands flat and wide on his knees.

When he opened the door to the darkened house, the inside air felt clean for its coolness. He went up the stairs, creaky and steep, and into the back room. He kept his clothes there, sacrificing the only closet in the master suite to Lily. He pretended he was being magnanimous, but the truth was, Silas liked having his own space. He pulled off his dirt-streaked T-shirt and jeans and tossed them in his suitcase with his other laundry. The early-evening sun was at its warmest and butter smooth, melting against the paned windows. He looked over the lawn again and caught the girls as they stumbled out of the water onto the patch of sand his father insisted on calling a beach. He smiled, thinking of Sean’s blush. A girlfriend was exactly what Sean needed. Ruth might be a little out of his league, if Silas was being honest. But liking her was a start.

Silas pushed through his shirts on their hangers, wanting a button-down for dinner, even though it would be only the five of them. The sound of the girls’ laughter floated around him like wind chimes. He loved hearing Mickey so happy.

Silas never felt awkward with Mickey. True, she was barely fourteen and therefore only just beginning, but Silas wasn’t worried. He understood Mickey in a way Lily never had, in a way neither of them had ever understood Sean. Silas and Mickey were cut from the same cloth. Mickey was a naturally happy, bright little girl. But Silas could see the other part of her, the part he recognized only because he had spent so long looking for a name for it in himself. The moments when the happiness he trusted as normalcy would drain right out of him, leaving neither sadness nor anger in its absence, just nothing at all. In these moments, he honestly believed that he could stop whatever he was doing, turn on his heels, and walk straight out of his life without looking back. That he wasn’t even human, that none of it had ever been real or his or anything at all. Leaving it all behind would be as easy as walking out of a movie theater, as putting down a novel without a hook.

“Can I use this shower instead of the one inside?”

Ruth’s voice was directly below his open window, rich despite its youth and loud enough that he could’ve been right next to her. Silas sidestepped out of view on instinct, his chest bare.

“If you like spiders,” Mickey answered.

“Challenge accepted!” Ruth yelled back, pulling the weathered shower door closed behind her. Silas recognized the creak so deeply he could almost feel the bricks beneath his feet, slick and uneven with years of water and soap scum. Evan built the outdoor shower, as he had most of the jerry-rigged add-ons to the house. Silas and Philip spent so much time running back and forth from the dock, Rose finally insisted he make something so the boys could at least rinse off before coming inside. She was tired of finding sand and flecks of lake grass between their sheets and under the dining room table, where their knees would bounce until they were excused to run to the dock once more.

Lily loved the outdoor shower. She said it made her feel dangerous. They used to make love against the grayed wood panels while the kids played on the beach, their happy voices the kind of soft-pedal soundtrack he never would’ve thought of as soothing before becoming a parent, but that became exactly that. Kids happy, safe, and otherwise occupied. That was before Lily had pulled away from him, back when he still knew what each shift of her shoulders meant and what had caused it. Silas hadn’t used that shower in years.

“If you leave your bathing suit over the door like that, I might have to steal it.”

“Don’t you dare, Mick.”

“I won’t, but no promises about Sean. Who knows where that perv might be?”

“Shut up!”

The girls laughed, and Silas heard Mickey’s footsteps come up the stairs onto the porch, the screen door to the house slapping open and then closed behind her.

Next came the screech of the showerhead. A high-pitched whine before the pressure kicked on and the bricks were pummeled, water ricocheting off and onto the lawn like the constant breaking of glass. Until Ruth stepped under it, and the water softened against her.

Silas closed his eyes.

There was a clink as Ruth reached for the soap. It was the same soap they always kept in the metal dish Evan had drilled into the wall. The soap smelled like what dryer sheets were manufactured to smell like. Fresh scent, they called it.

He could’ve pushed back from the window. He could’ve grabbed a shirt and turned his back to check the mirror. He could’ve walked downstairs and started chopping carrots for the beef bourguignon.