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“No,” she says. “I mean, we’ve been living here for a long time.”

“Twenty-two summers.”

“But it doesn’t seem that long, somehow.” She turns her face toward the lake house. “Some days, I feel like we just got here.”

“Some days I feel as though we’ve just met.”

Clare laughs. “I wouldn’t go that far. I’ve known you all my life.”

“Have you?” This is my secret difficult thing, the thing I pretend not to care about. “But you had another life . . .”

“And another love. But I love you, Beck.”

“I love you, too, Clare.” I am a little ashamed of needing to hear it so often at this late date.

She reaches across to me, and we clasp hands. The boat sways. We settle back on our seats. The boat cushions are thin, even doubled-up, and my backside aches.

“What would you do if you were starting again?” she asks.

I am slow to answer. “Starting out with you, you mean?”

“Yes, with me. Or not with me . . . If you could begin your life all over again now . . . ?”

I surprise myself and say, “I would make things. Paintings, maybe. Here I am, near the end of my life, and all my work seems to have vaporized.”

Clare looks sorrowful. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“I didn’t, either, till just recently. When I watch you drawing, I wish I had stuck with it. You have stacks of drawings, your sculptures take up space. Your art has a presence in the world.”

“But your work has affected so many people. It’s invisible, but it has changed people deeply.”

“Yeah. No.” I feel tired suddenly; this conversation has taken me down a wrong path. “You know, Clare. When I started out, I wanted to paint. And then I went to art school and no one was painting.”

Clare says, “I always thought you were the one who would be in the museums. But, you’ll be in all the history books.”

I laugh. “Clare, there aren’t any history books anymore. I don’t think there is even going to be any history.”

“No, that’s not true, Beck.”

“You say that like you know it.”

“I do know it.”

“Oh? Who says?”

She hesitates. “Alba.”

“And she went way into the future to check up on history?”

Clare doesn’t answer.

“What else does she say?”

“A lot of people starve, everything collapses.”

I look around us, at the peaceful lake, the moon that illuminates the trees, our little house. I look back at Clare, watching me with a placid expression. “You’re kidding me.”

Clare hesitates, and I see that she believes what she said. “Do I ever lie to you?”