The island was bought from the Abenaki long ago, and the history here hasn't gone anywhere. It sits in the old stone foundations sinking slowly back into the ground, in the family plots fenced off in the woods, in the tilted headstones no one but the deer visit anymore. Twenty yards from where I stand, the water folds into what I can only call a loch. Not a bay, not a cove, but something narrow and still, holding the light differently depending on the hour. Morning comes in as fog, low and unhurried, erasing the far shore until the sun finally burns [...]