I nearly stumbled upon our old bungalow. Everything seemed so different that I hadn’t expected the house to suddenly appear on my right. I stopped the car abruptly, lurching forward, glad there was no one behind me on the quiet street. The house looked lovely and well cared for. It had been a grayish blue when I was growing up, with black shutters. Now it was a sunny pale yellow trimmed with white. An old anchor leaned against the tree in the front yard. The obviously custommade mailbox at the edge of the road was painted to resemble the ocean, and a model sailboat rested on top of it. Someone cared about the house my grandfather had built, and I felt gratitude to them, whoever they were.

Between the bungalow and the newer house to the right of it, I could clearly see the canal. The water had an instantaneous, visceral pull on me. The current was swift, the water that deep greenish-brown I remembered so well. I rolled down my window and let the humid air wash over me. Here’s the only thing that hasn’t changed in this little corner of the world, I thought, as I watched the canal race toward the bay. The water, with its shifting current and its salty, weedy scent. I stared at it, going numb, a defense against feeling anything that could shake my fragile hold on the here and now. I was amazed that, so far at least, I seemed to be surviving this homecoming.

I turned into the Chapmans’ driveway, parking behind a pickup truck I guessed belonged to Ethan, and got out of my car.

“You made it!” Ethan walked from his house and across the sand to where I was standing. His feet were bare and he was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. His smile was filled with an ease I did not feel and he surprised me with a hug.

“Quite a trip,” I said, trying to return the smile.

“Traffic?” he asked.

“No. Just…I drove around.”

“Ah.” He seemed to understand. “Changed a bit in forty years, hasn’t it?”

The screen door opened again and it was a moment before I recognized the woman who emerged from the house as his daughter, Abby. She was carrying a sleeping infant, six months old at the most, in her arms.

“Hi, Julie,” she said, walking toward us. She had a baseball cap on her short blond hair and a blue quilted diaper bag over her arm.

“Hello, Abby,” I said, and I leaned down to try to get a look at her baby. The child’s head rested against Abby’s shoulder. It had to be a girl. Her eyes were closed, but her lashes lay long and curled on her pudgy cheeks. “And who’s this?” I asked.

“My granddaughter, Clare,” Ethan said. He reached up and rubbed his hand softly over the little girl’s back.

“She’s gorgeous,” I said.

“Clare and I are just leaving.” Abby smiled at me. “I’m glad I got to see you, Julie, if only for two seconds,” she said.

“You, too, Abby.”

Ethan put his arm around his daughter. “See you Sunday for dinner,” he said.

“You got it.” Abby stood on tiptoe to kiss her father’s cheek. “I love you,” she said, stepping away. Then she walked toward the white Beetle convertible parked in front of the house.

“Love you, too,” Ethan called after her. He grinned, watching his daughter and granddaughter get settled into the little car. He looked at me. “I am one lucky dude,” he said.

I nodded. “Abby’s really a lovely young woman,” I said, but I was thinking about Shannon, trying to remember the last time she had told me she loved me. I told her all the time. When had she started responding to those words with “okay” or the occasional cherished “you, too”?

“Hand me your bag and we can go in the house,” Ethan said.

I rolled my overnight bag toward him and reached into my pocketbook for my eyeglass case. I traded my prescription sunglasses for my regular glasses, then followed him into the house. Once inside, I realized that I had very little memory of its interior. When Ethan and I had played together indoors as kids—rarely, unless it rained—it had usually been at my house. We’d play cards on the porch or board games on the linoleum living-room floor. What had definitely changed inside the Chapmans’ house, though, was its furniture. The first thing that greeted me in the living room was a striking, floor-to-ceiling entertainment center in a pale wood, the craftsmanship exceptional even to my untrained eye. That was only the first of Ethan’s creations I noticed. Everywhere I turned, I saw evidence of his gift. There were end tables and a coffee table. Beautiful chairs with curved backs and silky smooth arms. The kitchen cabinets were a pale maple, and even the countertops were made of a eye-catching striated wood I couldn’t resist running my hand over.

“Tiger maple,” Ethan said. “I love the stuff. You’ll see it all over the house.”

I felt chastened by reality. I’d viewed his being a carpenter in negative terms. In my mind, I’d labeled him a man who worked with his hands instead of his head. But here were the results of his labor. He’d used not only his hands and head in the creative process, but there was plenty of evidence of his heart as well.

“The humidity here is terrible for the wood,” he said, smoothing his fingers over one of the cabinet doors. “But I don’t see the point of making beautiful things if you aren’t going to use them, so I use them.” Damn, he was cute, and I found myself smiling at him. He radiated a relaxed, soft-voiced, blue-eyed charm. The goofy kid who had begged for fish guts was simply not in evidence, and the attraction I’d felt to him in the Spring Lake restaurant was back in spades.

I looked through the kitchen to a jalousied sunroom.

“You enclosed your porch!” I said. Through the open jalousies, I could see the backyard and canal. “Let’s go out there.” I wasn’t sure if I truly wanted to be in the backyard we’d once shared or if I simply wanted to get it over with.

“Sure,” he said.

As we walked onto the sunporch, I squinted my eyes toward the opposite side of the canal. The weathered wooden bulkhead was gone. In its place was a steel bulkhead the color of rust. “What happened to the bulkhead?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you,” Ethan said. “Come on.” He led me through the porch with its white wicker love seat and chaise longue. Once outside, I saw that our two yards were now separated by a decorative wire fence, nearly the color of the sand.

“Who lives there?” I found myself whispering.

He took my elbow. “Come on,” he said again. “Let’s sit down and I can fill you in on the neighborhood.”

There was a beautiful boat in Ethan’s double-wide dock. I no longer knew a thing about boats, but I could tell this one had power and speed.

Ethan pulled two of the handmade wooden beach chairs closer together and patted the back of one, encouraging me to sit.

I sat on the chair, a few feet behind the chain-link fence that separated us from the water.

“God.” I shook my head. “I can’t tell you how strange this feels to be here. To see this water. I feel like I was here just last week, it’s so familiar to me. And look across the canal.” I pointed to the thick green reeds where George and Wanda and their cousins used to fish. No one was fishing there this afternoon. “It’s still undeveloped,” I said.

“Right,” Ethan said. “One of the few areas on the canal.”

“The Rooster Man’s shack is gone, though,” I said, marveling at the cluster of angular gray buildings that stood where the shack had once been.

“Condos,” Ethan said. “If you’ve got about $ 800,000, you can get one with two bedrooms.”

I looked at him, openmouthed. “Are you kidding?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know how much your old house is worth,” he said.

I winced. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t.” The current value of the bungalow didn’t matter. My grandparents would have sold it even if they’d had a crystal ball to see the future of real estate in the area.

Ethan told me about the old wooden bulkhead succumbing to erosion and being replaced by the rust-colored steel walls years earlier. He told me about the changes on our street, how quickly the houses had gone up during the seventies. We watched as a massive yacht, crowded with well-heeled revelers, sailed by in front of us, and I realized I had not even turned in the direction of my old yard. I sighed.

“It’s easier for me to focus on the bulkhead or the boats—” I nodded toward the yacht “—than over there.” I shifted my gaze to the right, letting myself truly look at the yard for the first time since my arrival at Ethan’s.

“I know,” Ethan said. “I figured you’d get around to it when you were ready.”

The old painted Adirondack chairs were gone and in their place, sleek metal patio furniture sat on the sand. More of the wire fencing surrounded the dock, and nearby was a large tree, barely recognizable as the tree I used to lean my crab net against. The screened porch that had seemed so big in my childhood still ran the length of the house, but it was not nearly as deep as I remembered it. A circular, above-ground swimming pool sat in the shade of the tree, and I could see the top of a motorboat in the dock.

“Who lives there?” I asked again.

“A young couple,” Ethan said. “The Kleins. Very nice. They moved in about four years ago and they have a boy about seven years old.”

“Ah,” I said. Now I understood the need for all the fencing. It gave them the illusion of safety. I said a little prayer that the boy would grow up to be a strong, healthy adult.

“I told them that you—someone who used to live in the house—was coming to visit me,” Ethan said, “and they said you’re welcome to come over and see how the house has changed, if you like.”

“No,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to set foot in that house of memories. “Do they know…you know…what happened?”

“No.” Ethan smiled, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Julie, you have to realize that that house has probably had—” He looked out at the water for a moment, thinking. “I don’t remember, exactly. Probably eight or nine owners in the last forty-one years.”

I chuckled at my foolishness. To me, what happened in that house seemed like only yesterday. I wanted to ask Ethan if he missed being able to sit out on the wooden bulkhead; the steel one offered no place to sit. I wanted to ask him if he missed the blueberry bushes and the woods we used to play in and the clanging sound of the old bridge when it swung open to let the boats through. But I realized those changes, like the eight or nine owners of our house and the Rooster Man’s shack being taken over by condos, were ancient history to him. In Bay Head Shores, he lived in the present, while I was still stuck in the past.

“This is hard for you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Being here?”

I nodded, staring at the water. “A tragedy occurs,” I mused. “Then you move on, or at least you try to move on, and you go through the motions of living your life, but you never quite forget it. It’s always there under the perfectly calm surface. And then…wham.” I pounded my fist on my thigh. “Something happens—like Ned’s letter—and you’re forced to deal with it all over again.”

“You’re the one who wanted me to take it to the police,”he said.

I looked at him sharply. “It’s not your taking it that shook things up,” I said. “The letter existed, whether you took it or not.”

He reached over to squeeze my shoulder. “You’re right,” he said. “And I didn’t mean to sound glib or like I’m blaming you. It was the right thing to do to take it to the cops, and they got on my case for not bringing it sooner.” He stared at his hands, rubbed them together, turned them palm side up, and I saw the signs of his work on his fingers. The skin looked rough and callused.

I wanted to take one of his hands in mine. I felt bad for snapping at him. This was no easier for him than it was for me. “I think they suspect that I wanted the time to clean out Ned’s house,” Ethan said. “You know, to make sure they wouldn’t be able to find anything incriminating.”

“I assume they didn’t find anything?” I asked.

“No, and I hadn’t found anything when I went through his stuff, either. No secret journals. No letters of confession. My friend who works at the department, though, told me they were able to find enough hairs and…whatever at his house to use for DNA matching.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said, although I didn’t know exactly how Ned’s DNA could be used at that point. “What did they ask when they interviewed you? What are they going to ask me tomorrow?”

He sat back in his chair, hands flat now on his denim-covered thighs. “They wanted me to give them the names of everyone Ned knows. Knew,” he corrected himself. “His drinking buddies. Women he dated. College friends. People he might have confided in. I couldn’t come up with many. Ned kept to himself. He wasn’t a social drinker. He drank to get drunk. Solo. Period.”