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with him, and I saw as clearly as I saw the lake in front
     of me that he wanted to go on talking to me in the sunshine.
    “Do you miss it?” I said. “Swimming?”
    “I miss it. But I miss a number of things,” he said. “And I still enjoy watching the lake as much as I ever did. Did you hear
     the wolves the other night?”
    “Was that what it was? I thought maybe they were coyotes.”
    “We have those, too. But no, that was a wolf pack. You hear them only once in a while.”
    “Well, I did hear them,” I said. “They woke me up.”
    “I was awake already. It’s a grand sound.”
    “It was. That’s a good word for it.”
    “Well, enjoy the lake and the day,” he said then, turning to go, as if he knew he was keeping me. “It’s a plea sure to see
     someone swimming.”
    “It’s a plea sure to be here. Thanks for renting the cabin to me.”
    He waved his hand. “You’re paying me. I’m the one should be thanking you.”
    But the truth was he was hardly making any money off me. If he wanted, he could have rented the place for much more than what
     he was charging me because that’s how it was in summer— resortscharged $1,000 a week for rustic cabins. But I figured Merle wouldn’t have rented to just anyone. I’d gotten the cabin by
     placing an ad in the local paper in which I tried to make myself sound responsible and appealing:
Quiet schoolteacher seeks small cabin to rent for summer. References available.
    “It isn’t much of a place,” Merle told me somewhat gruffly when I called him on the phone. “It was never meant to be fancy.”
    Yet after just a few minutes of talking, he invited me up to take a look around, and in another couple of minutes he said,
     “Well, if you find you like it, it’s yours. What would you think of five hundred dollars?”
    I hadn’t thought things would move so quickly, so I was taken off guard. “I know it’s a more than fair price,” I said. “But
     I can’t afford that much a week.”
    “No, I meant five hundred a month. I don’t want to be greedy.”
    That’s how we sealed the deal. The sense I got from talking to him on the phone was quickly confirmed when I met him. He was
     renting to me because he wanted another person around. Not company— he was too private for that— but a presence. Someone to
     watch from the window or see out by the mailbox.
    It was a tenuous and temporary role— the kind of relationship I felt comfortable in. And if part of it meant standing and
     talking once in a while in the sunshine, in my bathing suit, I didn’t care.
    I took Breville’s letter down to the dock to read. I could have read it in the privacy of the cabin, but this day I didn’t
     want that. I wanted to read it out in the sun, with my feet dangling in the cool water. I didn’t know why, but it seemed to
     matter at that moment to have everything out in the open. Maybe I felt stronger that way.
I’m not sure I can explain any better than I have how that night happened, and not because I don’t want to
, Breville wrote.
    I would do anything I could for you. But I’ve gone over and over it in my mind, and the best way I can describe it is to say
     that when I saw that woman, I made the decision to rape her. In some ways my actions are still a mystery to me. But if you’re
     asking if I ever had dreams or fantasies before that night of raping a woman, I can say no I did not. But nothing about that
     night is crystal clear to me. I was drunk and high and not in my right mind. All I know for certain is that I remember seeing
     her standing there in a bathrobe, and I saw part of her breast, and the decision was made. It’s almost like my body made it.
     But if I could do anything to take it back, I would. And maybe it’s like you say, the decision was in me all along. I know
     I was a hell-raiser and always getting into fights, so yes, I had violence in me. I will admit sometimes I feel like I don’t
     know how to take responsibility for my