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your odd little assertions of independence reassuring. He never really encouraged the attention you increasingly gave him, but he accepted your company as he never accepted mine. He gave you a sketching pad and took you with him several mornings when he rowed out to a small island in the bay. Andrew and I encouraged these expeditions not because we wanted to be together but because we wanted to be away from each of you. Often we exchanged no more than a few words after you left, then sat in companionable silence reading, writing letters, or simply watching the sea. Occasionally Andrew suggested a walk, but more often we waited for you both to come back before we did anything. For as much as we liked the relief of those mornings, we missed the enthusiasm you and Peter brought to any project. Peter was physically frail, obviously often not feeling well, though he never spoke of it, but often he had enormous energy, too. Climbing a steep hill, the rest of us fell silent, but Peter almost always sang or played his harmonica or recited patriotic speeches or made up poems of encouragement for us. At the top, he’d hurl himself to the ground in comic exaggeration of his breathlessness, but, while we rested, he could never sit still. He was finding rocks and flowers, exclaiming over the shapes of clouds. Occasionally he would begin to dance, awkward and serious, stop suddenly squint at us, and then begin to laugh.
    “Don’t play the fool,” Andrew would say, a little uneasily.
    “Esther, let’s make ourselves caps with bells on so that people won’t mistake us for our serious friends.”
    And you would join him in inventions, sometimes no more than pure mime, sometimes elaborate with props, branches from the stunted bushes that grew out of rock, grass, flowers, the paper which you always carried. Once, in one of the strange, raised-stone graveyards, you played leapfrog tag together. Andrew and I were always audience to your demented innocence. But we were not very good at entertaining ourselves without you.
    Andrew looked up from his book to watch you coming in from the island. Peter had handed you the oars, then wrapped himself in a blanket. He stood in the bow of the boat, playing “For Those in Peril on the Sea” on his harmonica. Then he gave the sign of the blessing and shouted, “Peace be with this hotel.”
    “They make me feel old,” Andrew said, but like me he did not altogether dislike the feeling.
    Peter’s enthusiasms could be suddenly cut off by a complicated reticence which you accepted without question, but which obviously troubled Andrew, perhaps even angered him.
    “Why is Andy so impatient with Pete?” you asked one night. “Pete admires him so much, and it hurts his feelings.”
    “It’s when Pete goes quiet,” I said.
    “Well, he can’t be sociable all the time.”
    “But sometimes he does it to get at Andy, don’t you think?”
    “Maybe,” you said. “It’s not a good sort of friendship. People shouldn’t have to get at each other or explain anything. They should accept each other.”
    The next morning Peter suggested that we all go out to the island together to spearfish. Andrew was reluctant, but, when he saw that I wanted to go, he agreed. We anchored just south of the island in about thirty feet of water. Peter began to put on the fins and mask.
    “Why don’t you let one of the girls have the first go?” Andrew suggested quietly.
    “You be the man of the family, darling,” Peter said. “Just let me be myself.”
    In the moment afterwards, when no one spoke, Peter stood up and dove into the water, almost capsizing the boat. I was not honestly surprised, and for you nothing had really been revealed.
    “Let’s swim.”
    More carefully each one of us went over the side, and then we swam rather self-consciously together to the island. Peter stayed out beyond the boat for a while, but then he came over to us and very deliberately offered the equipment to me. I felt unreasonably