My Daughter Tried to Keep Me Out of the Lake House I Built, But When She Arrived for the Fourth of July, I Had Already Made Room

with their names stitched on hand towels and jars of homemade peach jam inside. I put Samuel’s photograph on the mantel over the fireplace, one of him standing on the unfinished porch, laughing at something I had said about Earl measuring with his cigarette still behind his ear.

That first summer was everything he would have wanted.

The children swam continue reading …