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around.
    “There were lights,” Michael said quietly, his hand against the glass.
    “In the tank? Yeah.”
    “Blue lights,” he said.
    “My dad put the tank in before I was born. He loved fish.” She laughed. “I always thought the lights made the fish look like ghosts, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him how much this tank scared me. You must have had one, too.”
    A fading current seemed to connect Michael to the glass, a dying memory, dissolving in the very moment he remembered it, like a dream he woke to, trying to recount in the morning as it faded ( fish gliding in the blue . . . ).
    Then it was gone, whatever it had been—daydream, memory, trick of the mind—and Michael Pierce let his hand fall from the glass. He remembered Tracy saying in her message that Megan had left some books on a shelf, and at that moment all he wanted to do was go home and run his hand over the spines of those little books.
    “No,” he said to Ellie. “I didn’t have one of these.”
    They went back upstairs. Tim Flett was working the remote control, running through channels on the television. He didn’t look up.
    Michael put his card on the little end table next to the old man. “If you happen to remember anything more about my father.”
    “I said. He put out on a boat in Seattle.”
    “No, I’m just saying . . . if you remember anything else—”
    Tim Flett’s eyes shot from the TV to Michael to the window. “I told you,” he said sharply. “He put out on a goddamn boat!”
    “Dad!” Ellie scolded. And then to Michael: “I’m sorry. He’s tired.”
    “It’s okay,” Michael said. He followed the old man’s eyes to the window, and beyond that, the dark, still lake. Whole worlds exist beneath the surface. And maybe you can’t see down there, Michael thought, but there’s a part of you that knows.
1958
    THEY RODE silently toward Flett’s house. Bannen drove his Caddy, alone in the front seat. Oren sat in back, trying not to breathe too deeply. Sitting on either side of him were Rutledge and the other man, Baker, whom he barely knew.
    The road to Flett’s cabin was barely more than tire tracks in the trees. They came to the house, lights on, casting white tips on the surface of the lake.
    Oren had run into the three men on his way back to the roadhouse, stepping out of the trees with his hands up, pleading with them, explaining that his kid was in the car. Bannen told him that Flett had already taken his kid back to the lake house, and it came to Oren that he could’ve just stayed in the woods. They hit him around a little more and then dragged him back to the car.
    Baker and Rutledge pulled Oren out of the car by the arms. His head hung to his chest.
    Flett came out of the house, looking concerned. He wouldn’t meet Oren’s eyes.
    “Where’s Michael?” Oren asked.
    “Downstairs,” Flett said, without looking at him. “He’s fine.”
    “Look. I need you to take him home, Tim,” Oren said. “Take him to Katie’s. Will you do that for me?”
    “Oren,” Flett began.
    “Come on. I don’t want him to see this.”
    Flett considered the request. He pulled Bannen over to the edge of the house, beneath the porch light, and turned so that his back was to Oren. He spoke quickly, gesturing with his hands. Bannen just seemed to listen.
    “I know I got a beating coming,” Oren said quietly to Rutlege and Baker, who held his arms. “But don’t let him kill me. Okay? I mean . . . if it starts to look bad—”
    But he didn’t finish and they didn’t say anything. Oren took a deep breath and it felt like another kick in his side. “Christ. Do you sharpen them boots, Rutledge?”
    “Sorry, Oren,” he said.
    Bannen and Flett came back. “You got two minutes with the kid,” Bannen said.
    Oren, with Baker and Rutledge still on his arms, followed Flett into the house and down the stairs, into the bedroom on the right. And there was the boy, staring into Flett’s giant aquarium, tropical fish