“Thank you. Hurry!” Libby called behind me.

I ran to the end of the beach, shouting Peter’s name, the wind deafening the pitch of my voice. He was nowhere to be seen. I clambered back up toward the grass and continued along the shoreline. How long had Peter been gone? How far could he have gotten? Burke had once told me that Chazy Lake’s circumference was eleven miles—his knowledge of random facts like that was one of things I’d loved about him.

But eleven miles—that was a significant distance. And I didn’t even know which direction Peter had headed. I continued on for another five minutes, shuffling through the tall grass around the lake’s edge as I called for Peter.

An older couple sitting in fold-up chairs noticed me.

“Everything okay, honey?” the man asked.

“I’m looking for someone.” I paused, catching my breath. “He’s my—my friend’s husband, he’s thirty … something. Six feet or so, light brown hair. He would’ve had a camera around his neck. Have you seen him?”

The couple shook their heads. “Sorry.” The woman’s voice was slow and raspy. “We haven’t seen anyone out here today. It’s so darn peaceful. Good luck.”

I was suddenly racked with a sick, wrenching feeling in my gut that something horrible had happened or was on the verge of happening. An overwhelming sense of doom clobbered my chest.

I thanked the couple and turned back the way I’d come, my legs heedlessly breaking into a sprint. Perhaps Libby’s instinct had been right; maybe the baby was having an allergic reaction to the beesting, and locating Peter within eleven miles of shoreline suddenly seemed impossible. If the baby was allergic, we needed to get to a hospital and we needed to get to one fast.

My heart thrashed against my rib cage as I ran back toward our beach. I finally spotted our blue picnic blanket, and my blood froze when I saw the baby sitting there alone. I heard Libby’s scream first—a violent, barbaric noise—and when my eyes found her, she was in the lake, about five meters out, Nate’s arms around her neck as they swam toward the shore.

“Heather!” Libby yelled, the panic in her voice guttural. “GUS!” She flung her arm out of the lake, pointing toward the water trampoline. My heart dropped to my stomach. I scanned my eyes for Gus in his yellow floaties, two pops of color against the deep blue, but they were nowhere. Then suddenly I saw them, six feet from where I stood, discarded on the beach.

“GUS!” Libby screamed again, her arm thrashing out toward the water behind her.

Immediately I felt as if I were being choked, as though someone were squeezing my neck with all his or her might, cutting off my air supply. Adrenaline surged through me and I ripped off my shorts and T-shirt, sprinting into the water, a primal force taking over.

“GUS!” I wailed; the noise that came out of me was bloodcurdling, something from an animal.

Suddenly I saw his little fingers scraping at the surface of the water, halfway out toward the water trampoline, where the waves were choppy and the wind was blowing offshore. I was screaming, tears blurring my vision. I glanced over at Libby, who was closer to the beach. Nate was still clutching her, but now, just a couple of meters from the beach, they could both stand.

“Libby!” I called, but she didn’t answer. “Libby, HELP!”

I waded out farther, until everything but my head was submerged. I couldn’t swim. If I tried to save Gus, we would both drown. But I would try anyway—I was running out of time, and Libby was distracted. I sprang forward and dunked into the lake, thrashing my arms in front of me underwater. Terror seized me; I couldn’t breathe. I gasped for air, choking on water as I fought my way back toward a place where I could stand. Finally, miraculously, my feet touched the bottom, and I gulped air hungrily into my lungs. I used the grip of my toes against the sand to pull myself back toward the shore.

Once I could fully stand, I ran out of the lake, my chest heaving as I fought to catch my breath. I couldn’t swim. I would die in that water before I ever reached Gus.

“LIBBY!” I howled, clambering toward her as she wrapped Nate in a towel. He was crying, but he’d made it safely out of the water. The baby had started wailing again.

“LIBBY!” My voice was shrill and shaking with hysteria. “Please! Gus! I can’t swim! You know I can’t swim!”

Just as Libby turned toward me, her eyes pooling with fresh panic, I heard Peter’s voice from the other end of the beach. “Libby! Heather! What the hell is going on?”

“Please!” I ran toward him, pointing at the water where I’d last seen Gus. “Gus is out there!”

In a flash Peter was in the lake, his strong arms pulling him toward the place where I’d pointed. I crouched into a ball and waited, tears streaming down my cheeks in torrents. I didn’t know if it was thirty minutes or thirty seconds later when Peter appeared at the surface, one of his arms hooked around Gus’s still body.

Moments later they were back onshore, and I rushed to my brother’s side, tears spilling out of my eyes and onto his limp little chest. I was still shrieking as I watched Peter perform CPR, over and over. But Gus wasn’t breathing.

“We need to get him to a hospital.” Peter’s voice was hoarse.

I barely remember leaving the beach or the drive to the hospital in Malone, thirty miles west of Chazy Lake. The rational part of me knew Gus was already dead, that a hospital could do nothing, but I must’ve been clinging to a measly shred of hope because when the doctors pronounced him dead on arrival, I went mad.

Libby tried to console me, but I pushed her away. I screamed into my hands until my throat was raw.

I couldn’t look at Libby. I hated her. I hated her for leaving Gus to die while she saved her son, who already knew how to swim. I tried not to listen as Libby explained through muffled sobs her version of what had happened, but I couldn’t block out the sound of her voice.

While she had been tending to the baby and I’d been off looking for Peter, the boys had wandered farther down the shore. Libby had been in a hysterical frenzy over the beesting, convinced that the baby was experiencing an allergic reaction, and hadn’t noticed the boys wade deeper into the lake from the other end of the beach. She hadn’t seen Gus remove his floaties. A few minutes later she heard the boys screaming, and when she looked up, she saw them out in the water, nearly halfway toward the trampoline, their small arms flailing. The waves were stronger than she’d realized and must’ve caused them to drift. Libby immediately stripped down to her bathing suit, left her daughter on the blanket, and plowed into the water toward the boys.

I listened to Libby explain to the doctors that though her son could swim at a base level, he’d never been in such deep water, and she’d found him completely panicked. Both boys were crying. At first, Libby tried to swim with one under each arm arm, but she couldn’t make any headway carrying two forty-pound five-year-olds in such wind, and they were both growing more and more hysterical.

I knew Libby well enough to know how she would justify the next part, and I didn’t need to hear it. I didn’t need to hear Libby defend her subconscious decision to save her own son’s life first. My blood boiled at what she omitted in her spiel to the doctors—that Nate, unlike Gus, was a capable swimmer. Despite being panicked, Nate could’ve gotten back to shore on his own. But with a mother such as Libby—overbearing, egocentric, high-handed, despicable Libby—Gus’s life never stood a chance against Nate’s.

Libby said her plan was to get her son safely to shore and then go back for Gus, but that when she saw me reappear, she was still in the water and knew I could get to Gus sooner. She explained to the doctors that she was preoccupied with Nate and hadn’t known I couldn’t swim.

“You knew,” I whispered through tears. “I told you.”

“What? No, of course I didn’t. I would have remembered something like that.” She reached for me and I flinched.

“In Bermuda,” I growled, anger creeping up through the grief. “I told you in Bermuda. You were drunk.”

Libby emitted an indiscernible sound. Her hand rose to cover her mouth, and she said nothing.

One of the doctors asked who Gus’s legal guardian was, and I held up a limp hand. He peered at me, unconvinced, and asked for my age.

“Seventeen. I turned seventeen today. Today’s my birthday.” I heard Libby choke back a sob, and I prayed it would suffocate her.

The doctor replied that seventeen wasn’t old enough to be someone’s legal guardian. “Is there anyone else we can call? Parents?”

“My mom’s dead. My father is on the road.”

“Where on the road? How can we get in touch with him?”

“You can’t.” I shrugged. “I don’t know where he is. Haven’t seen him since December.”