What a pool it was, Sam thought. A special kind of pool. Very cold and salty. There was no chlorine in it, someone informed her. All saline. She took that to mean they were basically bathing, treating their various open wounds. She had been on vacation with her husband’s family for exactly two days.

A frog was dying somewhere in the corner of the pool. A well-bred dog, genetically modified to have the personality of a teddy bear, pawed at the water hesitantly, struck with the expression of someone who has either witnessed or committed a crime. The previous night this same dog, Dotty, had been seized by an urge to hump one of Sam’s Crocs, still affixed to her foot, and she had stood there frozen until her husband, also named Sam, kindly suggested she kick it to the side. So she had kicked the dog in front of the entire family, and the dog had issued a sharp and plaintive yelp — you betray me? — and Sam had profusely apologized, again and again and again, but no one present could get the sound of hurt out of their mind. 

I can’t believe you told me to do that! Sam wailed at her husband later, once they were alone. 

I didn’t tell you to do that, said her husband. I meant kick off the shoe. I didn’t know I had to clarify not to kick the dog. 

I kicked the dog, Sam said mournfully. 

You did, he confirmed. 

To be a Sam wed to another Sam was hugely embarrassing. But what could be done? Sometimes you just made an asshole out of yourself, falling in love with someone with the exact same name. Sam, said the judge who married them, do you take Sam to blah blah blah. Everybody laughed. 

Everybody except Sam’s mother. She did not think the sameness was funny and had in fact suggested that Sam take legal action. 

What do you mean? said Sam. 

Change yours, said her mother. Otherwise, it will make your mail too confusing. 

Change it to what? asked Sam. 

What about Naomi? Naomi is a nice name.

Then why didn’t you name me that back when you had the chance? said Sam. 

I didn’t think of it then, said her mother. Things change. 

Her mother wasn’t entirely wrong. The problem with the matching names was that Sam’s husband already had a twin — the owner of the genetically superior dog. The twin’s name was Lizzy, a name that Sam found undignified for an adult. The sound of it conjured up images of roller skates, a downy kitten squealing in a bassinet. In reality, Lizzy was modern, shiny even: a woman in control of her own image. Not daftly pretty, but beautiful. Pink lips drawn on like a crayon. Dangerous looking ankles. Hers was an anxious, odorless kind of beauty, quietly protected. By what means and at what cost, Sam couldn’t tell, even after all these years, but she detected a hardened effort in Lizzy’s looks. This fascinated Sam as much as it threatened her. Every now and then Sam was suddenly beautiful, but on those days she felt that she had simply grabbed her attractiveness out of the sky, like loose bills in a radio contest. 

Sam kept these thoughts private, ashamed of the underground river of jealousy that every now and then threatened to sweep her away. Seeing her husband and his twin sister interact made Sam feel insane; she wasn’t sure whether she was perverted or they were. Which would be worse: if Sam was imagining a psychosexual dynamic that didn’t actually exist, or if her husband was cultivating an intensely subtle psychosexual dynamic with his sibling that only Sam was smart and incisive enough to pick up on? She feared that the odds were against her being a perceptive genius. After all, she had grown up in a single-sex household. She had three sisters, a fact that others could convincingly argue had deformed her in more ways than she’d ever be aware of.

But the whole business of twins, she thought, was nothing short of witchcraft. What had they been doing while they were in there, swapping amniotic fluid in the womb, getting wasted and doing backflips whenever their mother ate maple syrup? Sam didn’t like to think about it. When Lizzy called her brother — and during a typical week she called quite often — he always took the phone to another room, leaving Sam alone on the couch. She would be attempting to read a book or work on her computer, but really she was listening in on their muffled conversation: her husband’s easy laugh, the cool note of his concern that she recognized as love. 

Sam wasn’t proud of the way she acted when Lizzy was around. Putting her hand conspicuously on her husband’s knee as if to say to Lizzy, I fuck your twin brother. In the presence of her sister-in-law, Sam stomped about with an explorer’s swagger, sticking her flag wherever she could. She employed the royal “we.” She spoke loudly and sympathetically of her husband’s small struggles, as if she was taking an oral exam on his emotional wellbeing: the boss who didn’t listen to him enough, the friend who was mysteriously ailing, the mechanic she thought had disrespected him. Look how well I know him, she seemed to be saying. Look how well I care for him.

 

The vacation with the Woodruffs — twin sister Lizzy, parents Hugh and Elaine, a few rogue cousins — was controversial in Sam’s own family. Her three sisters filed a formal complaint. An ethics board was assembled, a verdict reached: Sam was showing preferential treatment by taking time off work to attend this vacation instead of one with them. Her people. 

You like them better than us, her sister Sarah had accused, one day when they were watching Sarah’s toddler Arthur at the playground. Sarah was the oldest, first of their name, and Sam was third in line — the undecided middle.

Look at him! Sarah added, jabbing her finger toward her son, who sat dumbly in a patch of sand. Look at how much older he already is! You’re missing it. 

I’m not missing it, said Sam firmly. I’m right here. I’m with you all the time. I’m with your son all the time. I know the specific grunt he makes when he takes a shit in his pants behind your couch. I was the one who sat with you when you fed him just a smidge of peanut butter for the first time, in case his little throat closed up. God forbid I spend some time with Sam’s family, which, don’t forget, is a million times more normal than ours.

They spoil you, said Sarah, her arms crossed in displeasure. 

What’s wrong with that? said Sam. I don’t ask them to. 

Well, I spoil you, too, said Sarah. You don’t say thank you. Then you pretend like it’s so special when they treat you to something. 

Because they don’t make me feel bad about it, cried Sam. 

I don’t make you feel bad about it! Sarah cried back.

You don’t even like me, Sarah, reminded Sam. 

So much could be said for Sam’s sisters: they had spirited dialogue, good jokes, grew up eating dinner at the dinner table, relatively minimal inherited trauma, no allergies to tree nuts or gluten, zero stints in rehab, only one had been divorced — and that had really been for the best. But under no circumstance did they ever go with the flow. In fact, they were salmon out to spawn, swimming upstream. Mouths open. Gulping.

When Sarah gave birth to Arthur, Sam and Maya and Allison had stood around his crib looking at his tiny anatomy and reassured one another that gender wasn’t real. Sarah, initially apprehensive at the news of his assigned sex, had announced, with the sudden confidence of a conservative pundit, that she was a Boy Mom. 

Gross, Sam had whispered to Maya. She wants to kiss him on the mouth.

Stop, Maya had said. 

The other sisters had tried to protect Arthur from the U.V. rays of boyhood, but somehow it had crept under doorways and through slatted windows. Sam found herself reading to an eager audience of one, usually library books about giant monster trucks dumping their big filthy loads. She and Sarah were driving back from the grocery store, Arthur yawning in the back seat, when Sam had asked Sarah if he had said anything funny recently. 

Um, said Sarah. He said he wanted to S-A-W my L-E-G-S in H-A-L-F. 

Excuse me? asked Sam. 

He wanted to S-A-W my L-E-G-S in H-A-L-F, Sarah repeated. 

Where did he learn about that? asked Sam. 

I don’t know, Sarah said. But then he said that after he S-A-W-E-D me he wanted to put me on the back of a flatbed truck, drive me into a tunnel underneath the water, and cover me in C-E-M-E-N-T.

Damn, said Sam. What did you say? 

I said that might hurt Mommy’s feelings. 

Sarah had warned the three of them when Arthur was still an infant that he was his own person, made in his own image. It was as if Sarah knew the dark thoughts brewing in her sisters’ minds: that they could change him if they wanted to, that they could press down upon him and make him into a shape all their own. No, Sarah had said, as if warding off a powerful spell. Arthur was who he was, who he wanted to be. Even if it meant him sawing off her own two legs.

 

The house Sam’s husband’s parents had rented was an elegant, big windowed cottage in the Berkshires. Every morning, Sam swam in the pool with her husband and Lizzy, while the air was still and full of birdsong. They ate good bread and grilled meat on the deck, took turns reading on the daybed in the afternoons, walked through the thick grass of the woods before supper. At the end of every evening, Lizzy parted her dog’s hair (the dog had hair, not fur, signaling once more its genetic superiority) to search for ticks. Sam did the same for Sam, and vice versa. Everybody groomed each other like a bunch of chimps. This was the stuff of a real family vacation. Yes, they were surrounded by the threat of crippling tick-borne disease, but they weren’t afraid — simply mindful. Practical. 

The truth was that Sam liked to go on vacation with her in-laws because her husband relaxed into himself around them. She could almost see it: his whole body going slack. He was cheerful to begin with, but out in the world he could be mistaken for a serious person. Shyness wasn’t the right way to describe it — it was more like he knew when to pause. But around his family, a simpler, genial humor descended on him, the practiced cynicism so common among their friends fading away with each day. Didn’t the opposite happen in most families — in normal families? Weren’t you supposed to have your hackles raised, the hair on the back of your neck prickling with the electric feeling of what was to come: the conversations veering inexorably toward wounding, the cracks of conflict widening into chasms? That was family. That was love. It was supposed to be hard.

It was hard between Sam and Sam, after all. From the outside, their relationship had moved smoothly, as if guided by wheels: a couple of years dating, a couple more living together, and then the proposal on a rare overseas vacation. And yet Sam often felt the hard edge of contrast between them: their expectations, their reactions. Sometimes, in an argument, she could see them wallowing in their respective personalities — her charging into battle, him cowering. In these moments, she felt the desire to slap her chest and shout, Fight me, bitch! If personality was the story of who you’d become, who told you that story in the first place? Your family, Sam thought. These people had steamrolled a path before Sam and Sam, and now whenever they considered making a family of their own, they found themselves walking down it as if it were the only available road. 

Sam wondered if her husband’s family had figured out something no one else in the world had, or if they were just supremely in denial about their own dysfunction. In her mind, she had always associated closeness with a certain level of difficulty. And yet here were these twins, all tangled up in one another, the proverbial umbilical cord wrapped around both their necks, and they didn’t seem to be vexed in the slightest.

Once, Sam had practiced this theory on her husband, and he had replied matter-of-factly, No, we had our own umbilical cords. Twins don’t share one. 

I meant it metaphorically, she said. 

I feel like the umbilical cord is already inherently a metaphor, he said. A direct line to your mother? That gives you all the nutrients you need? Blood? Oxygen? Life? 

I’m dictating the metaphors here, said Sam. 

Right, said her husband smoothly, burrowing his head into Sam’s hair. What’s a new way to say that my sister and I are fucked up?

You aren’t fucked up, said Sam, pushing him away as he reached for her. That’s what’s fucked up. 

Usually Sam loved how affectionate her husband was. He touched her whenever he could — her dangling foot, her roughened elbow. This could be sensual, but sometimes he reached for her breasts with an eagerness that made the dreaded phrase echo in her head: Boy Mom. 

Historically, Sam had loved the part of dating someone when you first dug into the family stuff. It was like a vintage store full of garbage and one priceless purse. When meeting someone new, Sam always led with the fact of her sisters. She considered it the most salient detail of her life. She thought it made her sparkle. All those women! As if she had invented the concept of sisterhood. She didn’t want to be competitive, but she had felt a little upstaged when Sam first told her he had a twin. 

A twin brother? Sam had asked.

No, said her future husband. Sister. 

Wow. What’s that like?

What do you mean? 

To have a sister when you’re a brother, said Sam. 

It isn’t any kind of way. I think it all depends on who those two people are, you know? 

I would think, said Sam, that it’s kind of like having a mother wife. 

Um, no, said her future husband. It’s really nothing like that. 

We shall see, thought Sam. We shall see.

 

One evening, Sam and the Woodruffs were lingering over a perfect summer meal: sliced tomatoes, boiled corn, oily pesto. Their plates were splattered with sea salt, green petrol, a seedy red. The twins were reminiscing about their last trip to the Berkshires, back when they were in college. 

Oh god, said Lizzy, that was when I was dating Ben. 

I liked Ben, said Sam. He was a nice guy. 

He wasn’t that nice, Lizzy corrected. You always think my boyfriends are nice. 

Maybe you have good taste in men, said Sam. 

I obviously don’t, said Lizzy. 

I’ll never forget you telling me about the way he kissed, said Sam. 

You mean badly, said Lizzy.

You said it was somehow both too wet. And also too dry.

Both, said Lizzy. 

Sam fidgeted in her seat while her sister-in-law spoke. How is that even possible? she asked.

He was a magician, her husband said. A magic man. Too wet and too dry. 

Enough, said his mother. I’m losing my appetite. 

We’ve already eaten, Lizzy noted. 

Maybe it was your fault, said her brother.

Impossible, said Lizzy. I’m a good kisser. I’ve been told that before. 

That same evening Sam felt possessed to ask her husband: Am I good a kisser? He laughed. She tugged at his waistband. But he claimed he was sleepy — and maybe he was. He fell asleep instantly, into the kind of deep, unbothered sleep that only the well-adjusted can achieve. Sam, agitated, read until it was late, listening to the soft huff of his snores. And then suddenly, her husband was sitting up. He began to scream. He screamed and screamed and screamed.

The sound activated the whole house. Everyone ran in, one after the other: Lizzy, Elaine, Hugh, the dog. Their urgency was almost cartoonish. Hugh had a golf club in his closed fist. Sam was trying to reach her husband through all the impenetrable screaming, asking him what was wrong, did something hurt? Who was this rigid, alert man in front of her? Where was the man who had spent all week so relaxed his body seemed nearly liquid? The new Sam’s eyes were open but unfocused. He was wearing nothing but boxers. She scanned his body for signs of injury. 

Sam, said Lizzy. Sam, can you hear me? 

Sam was confused, but his thrashing slowed. He blinked hard and gasped. 

You’re okay, she said. Sitting on the edge of the bed, putting an authoritative hand on his shoulder. You’re having a night terror. 

Sam began to paw at his throat, as if he could feel the rawness from the outside.

What’s that smell? said Hugh. The room was full of it: sulfuric springs, rotten fish.

I think it was Dotty, said Sam’s mother. I think dogs do that sometimes when they’re afraid. 

Dotty was whimpering in the corner. Lizzy turned away from her brother to comfort the dog.

Whoa, said Sam. He kept tilting his head back and raising his eyebrows, as if he was slowly reinhabiting his body. That was crazy. Sorry, guys.

What happened? asked Sam. That was horrible. You were in pain? 

Weird dream, I guess? said Sam. I don’t even remember. Maybe it’s just being in a new place. But I feel fine. 

Look at Dad, laughed Lizzy, with his weapon of choice! 

Listen, said Hugh, disgruntled, lowering the club to his side. At least I didn’t express my anal glands.

Oh, we scared her, said Lizzy, patting Dotty. The sound you made scared her. You made an animal sound, Sam. You went someplace wild.

 

Sam couldn’t fall asleep after all that trouble. She was convinced it would happen again — her husband’s disembodied agony. She kept turning over and staring at him. But he slept through the night, something unnervingly close to a smile stretched across his face. He was still asleep when she woke up and headed toward the salt water pool. 

Sam took up residence in one of the lounge chairs, a soggy paperback book by her side, a thriller in which a woman with a cataract turned out to be psychic. Sam neglected it in favor of her phone: a black, gleaming square that sent dire warnings about its own overheating. She felt a pathetic desperation when her device told her it was too hot to use, even though she was the one who had left it out in the sun.

Lizzy, too, was frequently on her phone. She kept it tucked at her hip, as if what she was texting was secret. And she frowned at the screen a lot in careful concentration when she was facing it, whereas Sam had the unfortunate habit of grinning whenever a message or notification came through, so that people frequently asked what she was smiling about. Nothing, Sam would report glumly, that’s just the expression I make when I look at my phone. 

Sam knew that Lizzy always had some suitor chasing her. The last time Sam had seen her, not so long ago, she’d been dating a man who made expensive bucket hats out of old lampshades. Would he be coming on the trip? Sam had asked her husband. Oh no, he informed her. That guy was long gone.

She’s seeing someone new, he said. A woman named Eleanor. 

Eleanor, said Sam. 

I think Lizzy’s pansexual, her husband said. 

God, said Sam, please, it’s only eleven in the morning. 

That’s not early. 

It is always too early, said Sam, to be talking about your pansexual twin. 

Okay. 

Do you notice how beautiful she is? she asked.

Of course I do, he said. I’ve known her my whole life. 

Hm. 

Sam, do you realize that you’re the one making it weird?

It’s only weird if you acknowledge it being weird! she cried, with the unbearable satisfaction of a person proved right. 

This is the start of a fight, he said. A long and terrible fight. Can’t you see that? 

No, she said. Yes. No. But also yes. 

She had tried to complain about all of it to her little sister, Maya. But Maya was never sympathetic the way Sam wanted her to be. 

Tell me again, Maya said. What’s wrong with them being close? 

I don’t think I can be clearer, said Sam.

We’re close, said Maya. All you ever do is tell people how close we all are.

But it’s different.

Why?

Please, said Sam. It’s obvious.

It’s not, said Maya. 

What are you trying to say? 

I think Sam’s right, said Maya. You’re the one making it weird. 

I’m his wife. 

My God, said Maya. Listen to yourself. 

She tried her second-oldest sister, Allison, next. Sam could never figure out the time difference between the East Coast and France, where Allison had lived for the past five years. Or Sam chose not to. She called in the early evening, long past midnight for Allison.

Wha, said Allison sleepily. 

Hi Du, said Sam. 

Da, said Allison. Is something wrong? Why are you calling?

To chat, said Sam defensively.

Yeah, said Allison, but it’s late. 

It’s not my fault that you live in France. 

It is my fault, said Allison. 

Correct, said Sam. It is your fault. 

Okay, said Allison. Proceed. 

Sam laid out her case. All the evidence she had gathered. 

Sam, said Allison. 

Yes, said Sam. 

It’s you.

Wrong.

You got it twisted, said Allison. It’s not your fault, but you need to check in with yourself. 

I’m checking in all the time. 

Why do you do this? said Allison. It’s like with our baby. 

The sisters always referred to Arthur as “our” baby. 

What do I do with our baby? asked Sam. 

The way you gender things. You think all boys and girls kiss on the mouth. You say things like “kiss on the mouth.”

I don’t! said Sam. 

You know how I know you’re sick? said Allison.

How? 

You married someone with the same name, said Allison.

We don’t have control over these things, said Sam. Our minds. Their power. 

Okay. 

Lizzy’s pansexual, said Sam.

So?

I just mean, I’m open-minded, said Sam. 

You’re not, said Allison. It’s actually one of your worst qualities. 

I can’t listen to you, said Sam. You live in France. Twins probably kiss on the mouth there, too. 

Do they kiss on the mouth? Sam and Lizzy? 

Metaphorically speaking, said Sam. 

Goodbye, said Allison. 

Bon nut, said Sam. 

Nuit, said Allison.

 

Over the years, Sam had figured out how to court Lizzy, just as she had figured out how to court her husband. She was careful to remember all the small grievances Lizzy held against her parents and to affirm Lizzy’s retelling of collective memories. She had agreed to let Lizzy officiate her wedding. With her own sisters — the people she felt actually close to — it looked different. There was something so ancient in the way they collided. Cave-wall-painting ancient. 

What if, Sam’s husband once ventured. What if — 

What if what? she said, her eyes slits. 

What if it’s the four of you. The weird ones. The way you fight isn’t normal, is it? 

Sam, said Sam. 

Okay, said Sam. 

The conversation ended there. That was the razor-sharp power of sisters. People feared them. The collateral damage they were capable of inflicting, like a windstorm. Someone blowing down your whole damn house.

 

Normally on a vacation with the Woodruffs, Sam would’ve stayed near her husband, slinking off with him when she thought no one would notice. But that wasn’t going to cut it this time. Sam had kicked Lizzy’s dog that first night. And though it was an accident, a karmic stench seemed to trail the act. Lizzy loved her dog with the ferocity of someone who had a dog. She loved her dog very, very much. So Sam tried extra hard with Lizzy in the days that followed.

Let’s take a stroll in the pool, she said the morning after Sam’s episode. 

Just the two of us? said Lizzy brightly. 

Yes. Sam’s still sleeping the screams off. 

Okay, said Lizzy. That sounds nice. The early light was white, overcast. They lowered themselves into the pool, their shoulders up by their necks and their little T-rex arms at their sides, easing into the chill. The water flicked at their torsos, settling right above their pubic bones. Sam could track the faintest fur below Lizzy’s taut belly button, noting her exceptionally clean bikini line. Sam’s bush protruding from her own bathing suit looked like a wig a child might wear in a school play. It was errant and sideways. As they moved toward the deep end, Dotty ran along the perimeter of the pool, anxiously barking, her tail wagging. 

Just get in, said Lizzy, patting the surface with her hand. With each splash Dotty barked louder. 

She wants to be near me, explained Lizzy, shaking her head. She’s obsessed with me. 

That must feel good, said Sam. 

Sure, laughed Lizzy. Who doesn’t love to be loved the most? 

A small inflatable raft drifted past them. Sam helped Lizzy position it right up against the lip of the pool, and Dotty tentatively eased her weight onto it, sinking each paw nervously into the soft squish of the plastic. The effort caused the raft to cleave from the cold concrete, and now the dog was fully marooned, an island unto herself. She let out bewildered yelps, silenced only by Lizzy’s steady hand, guiding the raft. Finally, the dog could take the uneasy motion no longer and fell sideways into the water. She paddled furiously, yelping some more, her head craning desperately above the wobbling surface.

Oh please, said Lizzy, as the dog clambered up the pool steps and gave herself a hearty shake. What a drama queen! You know how to swim! 

The night terror, said Sam cautiously, once calm had been restored. I’ve never seen Sam like that. 

He used to get them occasionally when we were kids, said Lizzy. It’s like, what happened to you as a child? But I know everything that happened to him as a child. And the worst thing was one time our parents said he couldn’t go to Six Flags because our step-grandpa died.  

What would you do when he screamed like that? Sam asked. 

Well, the first time it scared the living shit out of me, said Lizzy. We had our own rooms, but we never slept in them. I would go to his room, or he would come to mine. 

That’s so sweet, Sam lied. 

After the third or fourth terror, Lizzy said, I just started kicking him. Or pinching? Once I even bit him. Something to jolt him out of it. And then he’d be fine, his usual smiling self. 

What a freak, said Sam. 

Lizzy shrugged. The water stilled between them. 

That’s just like him, isn’t it? said Sam. To wake up in the middle of the night screaming, and then two seconds later just pretend it never happened. That man wouldn’t know his own feelings if they slapped him across the face. I guess that’s what we’re for. 

I think he’d do okay without us, said Lizzy coolly. 

Sam’s husband emerged from the back patio, his face streaky with sunscreen. He must have applied it himself, a fate he was unaccustomed to. Someone was always reaching out to rub him, as if racing to do the honors. That trip, Sam had tried to make sure that she was the anointed attendant, lest he revert and ask his sister or mother, but then one afternoon he’d discovered a red plot of skin in the middle of his back, the ghostly white imprint of fingertips swiping at the edges, a clear record of her lack of follow-through. 

Sam thought back through the six years she’d known the Woodruffs. Had she heard even one of them breathe a bad word about her husband? They might have rolled their eyes at him every once in a while, but nothing beyond that. No combat. It bothered her, like the pale scrim of sunscreen on her husband’s face. He bent down at the edge of the deep end, hovering over the two of them as they treaded water like a pair of gigantic ducklings. Sam looped her hand around the hard egg of her husband’s ankle. He staggered back to escape it, nearly stepping on Lizzy’s dog, who skittered toward the grass. 

Don’t worry, said Sam, as her husband loosened himself from her grip. I wasn’t going to pull you in.

 

The last outing of the trip was to a swimming hole that a second cousin had recommended. He lived in the area, and would stop by the rental with his two young sons to swim in the pool. The boys were eight and ten, and they referred to Sam as Girl. Where’s Girl? They would ask. They knew Lizzy’s name. There was Lizzy, and then there was Girl. A strict, policed border existed between them. Girl was a precursor to Wife, thought Sam. She was pleased. 

It was a relief to leave the rental house. The pool’s four corners had begun to feel claustrophobic. Plus, Sam loved spots like this, had spent her childhood exploring them. Like all worthy swimming holes, this one required some light trespassing. They parked at the end of a private road and set off, Dotty running two steps ahead, regularly throwing her head back to make sure they were behind her. The two little boys were their guides. Like hunting dogs, the boys were trained to sniff out anything age inappropriate — every empty beer can and old yellowed condom. A swimming hole was the provenance of yahoos. Sam had seen one too many drunk dads attempt a poorly timed backflip into a cold river, or lose their shorts to a particularly strong current in an effort to chase down a bottle of Gatorade traveling downstream. But she also knew that you couldn’t be a snob about spaces like this. They existed to be ungoverned, and if that attracted men who were prone to self-injury, so be it. 

The little boys had sloping bellies, and the creases of their joints were covered in bug bites. When they spoke, they did so in short shouts — all HEY or WHAT or RARGH. WHERE IS GIRL? Lizzy’s dog nosed their elbows every now and then, and they absent-mindedly petted her dirty fur. Together they made a pleasant tableau: wild things. The Woodruffs followed, their orthopedic water shoes sinking into the wet earth, Saran-wrapped turkey sandwiches swinging about in a backpack. 

As they walked, Sam could hear the distant echoes of other bathers: a hollow yelp from the top of a tall rock, the crash of a body as it hit the water. After a few minutes, they emerged at the top of a small waterfall. The water was green and scummy at the edges. There were little hot holes in the rocks where spiders spun their webs. Teenagers sunned themselves on the nearby granite shelf, eating tortilla chips and shouting at one another. Sam felt the relief of an obviously beautiful space. She instantly shimmied out of her shorts and into the water, which smelled faintly of runoff, but she didn’t mind. She crawled to the ledge where the water cascaded down. There were rocks underneath, the current pulling tight around them. 

Sam’s husband swam toward her, with Lizzy behind him, and the three of them raised their voices to be heard over all the rushing water. Dotty, swept up in the feeling of the afternoon, approached with her tail wagging, a waterlogged stick hanging sideways out of her mouth. Sam’s husband threw it a couple of feet and she swam after it, bringing it back. Sam herself threw it next. She had terrible aim — the stick landed right at the edge of the waterfall, then quickly sailed over. There was a moment of disbelief before Sam thought to scream after the dog. But her scream meant nothing: in a matter of seconds, Dotty, blinking and paddling, was gone, too. 

It all happened so fast. Sam and Lizzy’s parents were standing up, their books abandoned, craning their necks trying to look downstream, shouting after Dotty. Even the teenagers stopped talking, a hushed audience in the presence of desperation. Sam spun around with a splash, and came face to face with her husband and his twin. They were clutching one another, sobbing. 

Quiet then. And too much of it. Just the sound of the water, as they all strained to listen. But wait, couldn’t Sam hear it? She thought she did. A twilight barking, equal parts joy and apprehension. Maybe that dog had gotten free. Maybe that dog was running right back. Couldn’t her husband hear it, too? Didn’t he know what was coming, to whom this dog belonged? The current was strong enough that if Sam wasn’t careful, she would lose her footing. She bent down to readjust her stance, then righted herself.