It is night on the lake, the rowboat trundles, the water slaps, complete blackness, if you don’t count the stars. Oars in rowlocks squeal like witches as the hull glides over silky sand and hidden whiting. Her beloved uncle, fishing dumbly, is company, but not interruption, unlike the others. The child, contented, hears the fish flop, smells inherent salt like tiny crabs fingered that afternoon. All to herself she wants but one thing— to be upside down in the lambent darkness with a mouthful of stars, watching the two silent intruders, hands on their lines, eyes on the night, thinking…