The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve

to him.
    Evan appeared to be irritated by this admission.
    “But you must do,” he said. “I know you do.” He looked up quickly and allowed his eyes to meet mine.
    I believe that wordlessly, in those few moments, we spoke of many things. His hand grew hot under mine, or perhaps it was
     simply my own fever, and, just as I could not pull away, neither could he, and for some minutes, perhaps even for many minutes,
     we remained in that state, and if it is possible to say, in a few moments, even without words, all that has to be said between
     two individuals, this was done on that day.
    After a time (I cannot accurately say how long this occurrence took place), I sat up, and in a strange manner, yet one which
     on that day seemed as natural to me as a kiss upon a baby’s cheek, I put my lips to the inside of his wrist, which was turned
     upward to me. I remained in that position, in a state of neither beginning nor ending a kiss, until that moment when we heard
     a sound at the door and looked up to see that our sister, Karen, had come in from the garden.
    I remember the bewildered look that came upon her face, a look of surprise and darkening all at once, so that she frightened
     me, and a sound escaped my throat, and Evan, leaving me, stood up. Karen said to me, although I think not to Evan,
What is it that you do?
To which question I could no more have made an answer than I could have explained to her the mystery of the sacraments. Evan
     left the room, and I do not believe that he spoke. Karen came to me and hovered over my bed, examining me, her hair pulled
     tightly back off her head, her dress with its shell buttons rising to her throat, and I remember thinking to myself that though
     the wondrous forgiveness I had so recently felt encompassed everyone around me, I did not really like Karen much, and I felt
     a pity for her I had not consciously realized before. I believe I closed my eyes then and drifted back into that state from
     which I had only a short time earlier emerged.
    Not long after that incident, I recovered my health. Never was anyone so glad to greet the lustrous mornings of that spring,
     though I was quickly advised by Karen that my childhood was now over and that I would have to assume the responsibilities
     and demeanor of a young woman. Around that time, perhaps even immediately after my illness, it was decided that I would remain
     sleeping with Karen in the kitchen behind the curtain, and that our father would permanently take up the bed I had shared
     with Evan. This was because I had reached, during my illness, the age of fourteen, and that while I had been sick there had
     been certain changes in my body, which I will not speak of here, which made it necessary for me to move out of a room that
     Evan slept in.
    Our mother having died, and our father out at sea for most of the hours in his day, I was put under the care of our sister,
     who was dutiful in her watch, but who I do not think was ever suited for the job. Sensing something, I know not what, a reluctance
     on her part perhaps, I was sometimes a torment to her, and I have often, in the years that have since passed, wished that
     I might have had her forgiveness for this. To her constrictions I gave protest, thus causing her to put me under her discipline
     until such time as I did not have so much freedom as before.
    I would not like to attribute the loss of my liberty, my uncompromised happiness, to the coming of my womanhood, and I believe
     it is merely a coincidence of timing, but I was, nevertheless, plagued with extremely severe monthly pains, which may have
     had, at their root, the more probable cause of my barrenness.
    I must stop now, for these memories are disturbing me, and my eyes are hurting.

W HEN I LOOK at photographs of Billie, I can see that she is there — her whole self, the force of her — from the very beginning. Her infant
     face is intricately formed — solemn, yet willing to be pleased. Her baby hair is