And that day was really no different from so many others that we had shared.

We chattered as we walked. We talked of what we would do, where we would go, if Eugene would come out this time or if he would stay home and read like he seemed to do so much these days.

We did not talk about Lillian Wade. She had died back at the end of 1952, and no one said her name. Everyone tried not to think about her, because it had been an awful, frightening thing.

I asked my mother one time why someone so rich and young and beautiful had died, and she shook her head and said, “No one knows why, Maryanne. Maybe being so rich and young and beautiful all at the same time is more than the human heart can bear,” and then she never spoke of it again.

I had heard rumors that she had taken her own life. I did not know if it was true, and I wasn’t about to go asking her children.

Maybe having to wake up and look at Earl Wade every day—that scary face he sometimes had—finally killed her.

I remember when it happened. I remember how me and Nancy were on our own for weeks. Lillian Wade died in October of 1952, and we saw Michael infrequently until after that Christmas. Even though the Wades were about as Whytesburg as the Rockefellers, everyone was stunned by the news. I heard she was a drinker, but that meant nothing to me. I liked to drink—soda, water, orange juice, pretty much everything. I figured it was maybe a polite way of saying something else entirely. But it wasn’t until the spring of 1953 that we saw Matthias and Catherine and Della and Eugene again, at least for any length of time. Then—slowly, but surely—things started to come right again. Except for Eugene. Eugene was still Eugene, but he was like a quieter version. He still laughed, but he never laughed for long. He still smiled, but the smile seemed more an effort than a pleasure. He never really talked to me directly about his mother, but he made reference to her often. He was fifteen years old by then, and I think he took it the worst of all of them. He always had his books with him, and every once in a while I’d see him drift a little, but he’d always come back, you know? He was still Eugene, however, and Eugene was just a little older than me. If I had to be honest, which I would never have been, I would have said that of the two of them—Matthias and Eugene—I loved Eugene just that little bit more. There was something sensitive and artistic about him. Whereas Matthias had to force himself to learn poems to impress Nancy, Eugene just knew them. He talked about things he’d read and films he’d seen, and he was always the one who brought the best records to play.

But that day, that Thursday in August of 1954, thoughts of Lillian Wade and what had really happened were the furthest thing from all our minds, it seemed.

We walked a little way toward the Five Mile Road, and then Michael told us that we were going to wait there for Matthias and the others.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“Everywhere and nowhere,” he said. He lit a cigarette then, and—just like always—Nancy asked him for one.

“Not a prayer, Miss Nancy Denton,” he replied, just as he always did.

It was a game—and a silly one at that—but there were so many such games between Nancy and Michael, and no matter how many times they played them, they never seemed to tire of it.

We heard them before we saw them. They came on bikes—all four of them. Eugene and Della had lollipop sticks wired to their spokes, and the noise they made was like a thousand children clattering sticks along a picket fence.

It was a sight to behold—Della and Eugene and Matthias caterwauling over the hill, hollering like fire sirens, whooping and squawking like banshees. And then there was Catherine some way behind, and you could just tell from the way she looked that she had been sent as supervisor yet again. Catherine would escape as soon as she could. She would return to the house alone and get back to whatever it was that Catherine Wade got back to. She was younger than Matthias, but still there was always something of the boy in Matthias. My ma told me that girls grow up faster, as if that were something to be grateful for. Seemed sad that anyone would be better by having less of their childhood.

And then it was all noise and laughter and wisecracks and bottles of soda being shaken and sprayed, and Della with her hair soaking wet and sticky and Michael just standing there watching over us all like the grown-up that he was.

“The river,” Matthias said. “We have to go to the river.”

Eugene was laughing like a mad thing. It was good to see him laugh. It made me happy.

“Come on, then,” Catherine said. “If we’re headed that way, then let’s get going.”

“You don’t have to stay, Catherine,” Michael said. “I can take it from here.”

“But my father—”

“Is off at one of the factories, I am sure,” Michael interjected, “And will be none the wiser unless someone tells him. You go off and enjoy your day. I’ll look after this lot.”

Catherine reached out and touched his shoulder. Nancy didn’t see her; otherwise Catherine would have gotten an icy look.

“Thanks, Michael,” Catherine said. “That’s really kind of you.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, and then he turned and started off toward the river.

Catherine took her bike and headed back the way she’d come.

Nancy ran after Michael, and then me and the others went after her.

I walked with Matthias and Della. Eugene was up ahead a little way. He kept glancing back at us, almost as if he wanted to make sure that we didn’t drag behind.

I smiled at him. He smiled back. I felt the color rise in my cheeks.

He was such a handsome boy. He had these deep, dark eyes, and the line of his mouth was just like his mother’s. If he’d been a girl, he would have been so beautiful. I remember thinking that, and though it seemed such a strange thought, it also seemed to make perfect sense.

“You didn’t bring the record player?” I asked Matthias.

“I’ll go back and get it later,” he said. “We have food, though. We made a great picnic, didn’t we, Della?”

“Apart from stinky boiled eggs,” she said, and she wrinkled her nose.

“That’s funny,” Eugene said, “because those eggs said the same thing about you.”

She stuck her tongue out.

Eugene did the same, crossed his eyes, and Matthias sighed and shook his head like they had already tried his patience sufficiently for one day.

And then we were at the river, and Nancy was already ankle deep in the cool water. Michael was seated against the trunk of a tree, and he smoked his cigarette and watched us as we shed our shoes and socks and went on down there.

Eugene said how he would catch a fish with his bare hands and we’d eat it for lunch.

“You’d no more catch a fish with your bare hands than catch a ride on a moon rocket!” Della shouted, and he splashed her once, twice, and it was all downhill from there.

Had Catherine been there, she would have had words to say, but Michael just watched us, laughing at our foolishness, and it seemed like the happiness we felt somehow reached him in a way that he needed. Looking back, maybe it reminded him of a time before the war, before everything that happened to him out there, and it was somehow healing for him.

Half an hour later, five drenched troublemakers stumbled up the bank and lay on the grass in their sodden clothes, but the sun was high by then, and it seemed like no time at all before we were dry.

That was what was different. That was the thing that seemed so strange. Time was flexible, almost liquid. When I wanted it to go quickly, it went slowly. When I wanted it to drag its heels, it ran full tilt to the finish line.

“So, where’s this fish?” I asked Eugene.

“I nearly had him . . . I did, really,” he said, but he was kidding me, and I pushed him.