We visit with his friends on the island. There are two small children, and I am anxious. Their big emotions, their vulnerability, their precociousness. At times I relax into it, pull the small boy onto my lap and kiss the top of his soft, sweet head. The girl terrifies me, and she glowers at me from across the room.

We make love quietly in the dark of the guest room. The room is stacked with buckets of toys and a cartoon train layout graces the rug. I do math in my head as we progress towards climax. I think of the perpetually sticky kitchen table, the sagging skin around the parents eyes. Math complete, I know that I am ovulatory. At the last moment, I pull him out of me and he comes against my body. He doesn’t mind this, and perhaps delights in it. I have no interest in having children right now.

We leave the house during the daytime to climb and swim. Hiking through the salal and Douglas firs. Climbing at the quiet basalt crags, the air temperature blistering into the 30’s, a rare occurrence on the west coast of Canada.

“If you could change one thing in your life right now, what would that be?” I ask him as we hike along the narrow, dusty path.

“Not a thing,” he says. “Well, I’d like 10 billion dollars to give to various causes, that’d be nice.”

After climbing, we go to the public beach on the lake. We swim out beyond the children that paddle in the shallows. We tread in the deep, green water. Dive down and open our eyes, yellow shafts of sunlight illuminating the depths below.