More mine.
I take the food inside and place it in my toaster oven to keep warm. Then I take everything off but my swimsuit and slide into the water.
It’s warm from the day’s sun, still holding heat in the upper layers. I float on my back, letting the lake take my weight as I spread my arms.
The sky above me deepens from blue to indigo.
Right now I just want this. Water holding me. Stars emerging.
Night settling over the lake like a warm blanket.
I start humming, a nameless melody that I can only hear when the world is quiet enough.
I sing the way I only sing when no one’s listening.
I don’t know how long I float there. It’s long enough for stars to multiply and the lake surface turns into dark glass.
And long enough for me to feel settled once more and leave my worries for tomorrow.
CHAPTER 6
MUIR
My mother taughtme about sirena voices when I was eight. A sirena’s voice broadcasts emotional truth beneath the words—the frequency that lives in the chest and moves through air like water through rock. That part can’t be controlled. It says what’s actually happening, regardless of what the words say.
Listen below the words, she told me.That’s where the truth is.
I heard it at the bonfire five nights ago.
Cora sang for the tourists and townspeople, her voice warm and calibrated, giving the audience exactly what it needed. Professional. Managed. But underneath—just for half a verse before she pulled it back—something slipped through. An ache so specific and so old I knew its shape immediately.
She is not settled.
She hasn’t been settled in four years.
I’ve spent five days not doing anything with that information because it wasn’t mine to have. She didn’t know I was there. Standing at the edge of her firelight receiving transmissions shedidn’t send deliberately is not something a decent person acts on.
I know this.
I’m still thinking about it constantly.
I leave The Snack Hut as Rex and Cora are closing down and walk the shore path back toward the cottage.
The path bends through old pines, and there’s a gap between two trees. I take a detour to enjoy the less cultivated parts of Harmony Glen. The light is good, the trees add a crisp scent by the water, and I’ve been focused on tourists and equipment for six hours.
As I follow a random path, I hear her.
She’s singing.
Not the bonfire version. This is what the voice does when it thinks no one is listening. I’m too far for words, too far for melody, just close enough to catch the edge of it. Four years of unvoiced feeling given form in the acoustic space between her dock and the water and the early stars.
It’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever accidentally witnessed.
I make myself move. Quietly. She didn’t choose to give me this. And I refuse to take something she did not offer me freely.
I walk without looking back.
The frequency follows me anyway. The water carries things, and the water is everywhere here.