EIGHTEEN
FROM THE UNEVEN SHORE BEHIND the hospital, Sawpit Island was a mere suggestion of land on the horizon. The inky new-moon sky showed it as an absence of light, not more. Hazel lifted her end of the canoe into the water and tried to piece together the chain of conversations that ended here, in this late-September, late-night trip to Sawpit with Gideon, and couldn’t. She wouldn’t have considered herself passive, and anyone who knew her would have thought the idea laughable, but there it was, the bald fact of her inaction. She’d allowed herself to be carried along to this point, canoe in the water, an eccentric drifter she’d met only a few months earlier seating himself at the other end. The canoe was Ruth’s, a gift of gratitude for the safe delivery of a fourth son, the early mornin
