Lake Manitou.
I used to spend the summers with Harrison, swimming off the boat at Lake Manitou.
For hours we lay in its ribs listening to the soft slap of the waves. At night we slept in a driftwood cabin, intertwined, a dream catcher hanging above the bed.
But we never had a full story. The war was barely a year old when Harrison became the past.
So I spent my summers in the city. It was the only way I could keep away the ghosts.
Until today. I was looking at photographs and those summers were alive again. I returned to the driftwood cabin and rowed out from the bone white curve of sand, my reflection twisting in the silver water. A shadow flitted across.
Then I saw a woman rising up out of the lake.
Her head came out of the water first and she swam straight towards me. It was me, but 20 years younger.