The Bay at Midnight. Diane Chamberlain

remember watching you float down the canal in an inner tube.”

      It took me a moment to place the memory, but then it came into my mind all at once. “I’d forgotten,” I said, laughing, although the memory carried with it both joy and sadness since Isabel had been so much a part of it, and though Ethan and I reminisced about several other shared experiences before getting off the phone, it was that memory which stayed with me for the rest of the day.

      CHAPTER 11

      Julie 1962

      It was a weekday in Bay Head Shores, which meant that our father was home in Westfield. We had finished eating breakfast and Grandpop was already out in the garage working on some project, while Grandma was starting to clear the table in spite of our mother’s admonishment to relax a while. I started to stand up to help Grandma, but Mom told me to stay where I was and I sat down again. She shook a cigarette from her pack of Kents and lit it, blowing a puff of smoke into the air above the cluttered table.

      “I have an idea for something we could do today, girls,” she said to the three of us.

      “What?” Lucy sounded suspicious. Whatever it was, I could tell she was prepared to say she didn’t want to do it.

      “Look at the current,” Mom said, and I turned my head to peer through the screen at the canal. The current was moving slowly in the direction of the bay.

      “What about it?” Isabel asked. She was holding a lock of her hair in front of her face, probably scrutinizing it for split ends.

      “Well,” Mom said, “after we’ve digested our breakfast a bit, how about we take the big inner tubes and ride the current all the way from our house to the bay.”

      “Keen!” I said. It was an extraordinary idea.

      “You’ve got to be kidding,” Isabel said, but I knew she was intrigued. It was hard to get Isabel interested in any sort of family activity, and I was impressed that my mother had managed to come up with something exciting enough to draw in her oldest daughter.

      Grandma laughed, sitting down at the table again, her chores forgotten. “I remember when you and Ross used to do that,” she said to my mother. She rolled the r in “Ross” in a way that made the name sound very pretty. I was surprised by what she’d said, though. So was Isabel.