The August night is sweltering and my four-poster bed seems entirely too small. Shift and turn as I might, every square inch of linen is wrinkled and damp, and I find no reprieve from the warmth my body has set down. Away from Mother and her comforting words, Edward’s proposal seems a warren of trapdoors, regardless of what I decide. I pray for guidance, but my mind only drifts from pleas for good judgment and clarity to Tom’s warm mouth on my own. And somehow I am depraved enough to wonder, Is it a sign? Surely God could nudge that kiss from my prayers.

By the time there is enough light to make out the straw-colored vines of the paper covering my walls, I am determined to find Tom, in the glen, at the whirlpool, or even at the Windsor Hotel. I am determined to keep my head clear, my mind sharp, much as Mother would, rather than a stew of bristle hair against skin and forearms rippling with strength each time the crowbar is passed. I will ask about ambition and schooling and intentions, and rye whiskey drunk at the Windsor Hotel or any other place, questions a father not as negligent as my own would surely ask. And if Tom minds? Well, then, mind he must. At least I will know. I dress quickly, straining to hear any stirrings in my parents’ bedroom, and tiptoe downstairs, careful to avoid the creaky third step.

I am on River Road before the birdsong has ended or the dew dried from the grass. Facing south and then north, I squint into the distance, but the road is empty.

At the Wintergreen Flats overlooking the glen, I stop for a moment and survey the woods far below, but the leafy canopy easily blocks any glimpse of him. I descend the stairway of some seventy steps, the only way to reach the winding pathways of the talus slope. Overhead the uppermost layers of the flats protrude beyond the cliff wall forming a natural amphitheater and, to the north, a spectacular promontory. I stand gazing upward at the river’s handiwork.

There are giant boulders strewn about the woods, some precariously poised, others with great basins or even curiously round hollows carved all the way through. Smaller fragments of sheared rock are only partially covered with earth, yet the scenery is sylvan, pretty, too, a paradise of wildflowers and ferns. Each time a pathway intersects mine, I select the route with the steepest descent, thinking it will lead me most quickly to the river and to Tom.

The thunder of the Niagara tells me the rapids are near long before I am able to glimpse the froth and spray through the woods. I can see only a few feet in any one direction, and my spirit wanes, my search seeming futile, even dangerous, the scheme of a naïve girl expecting providence to intervene. But I continue along the path, humming in an attempt to keep my imagination in check, until I come to a spot where a glut of boulders between the pathway and the riverbank has kept the vegetation down. I pick my way across the boulders, scaling their sides, descending their slopes, striding the crevices in between, until I come to a thin stream of river severed from the main flow by a boulder. The boulder would provide the perfect vantage point from which to view a good chunk of the shore, yet I once read in the newspaper about a group of tourists who were marooned on a boulder that became an island when the river unexpectedly rose. Also, at its farthest reach, the boulder is lashed by rushing water, much of it curling backward and forming an angry standing wave as it smashes headlong into the current surging downstream.

Regardless, I remove my stockings and shoes and hike up my skirts. The stream is deceptive, possibly because of its juxtaposition with the Niagara. Midway to the boulder, the current tugs my shins, threatening to sweep my feet from beneath me and deliver me to the river proper, from which even Captain Webb could not escape.

Once on the boulder, I need only a moment to scan the empty shoreline and then a further moment to take in the majesty of the gorge wall. So as not to lose my nerve, I keep the river at my back.

My return to the pathway is without mishap, and, elated by my daring, I continue on, in a southern direction, toward the whirlpool, though the pathway narrows and then becomes altogether difficult to pick out. It is likely the route Tom follows as he makes his way between glen and whirlpool, also other fishermen and the most adventuresome of the tourists. There is evidence, too, of deer, tidy brown pellets that fortunately do not stick to my shoes.

Earlier I arranged my hair hastily, with little thought given to a scramble in the woods. Now slim branches pull long strands from their clips. My right forearm is scraped in two places, and a thin line of red appears on the back of my hand. My skirt is caked in dust, which will likely shake loose. But in several spots the dirt is ground in. I will have to tell Mother I went into the glen to walk and to think. I will say that I became lost, that I panicked and stumbled in my rush.

The stone beach of the whirlpool could not be a more welcome sight, except that the lone gentleman catching his breakfast on the far shore is not Tom. Disheartened, but anxious to take up the most efficient route to the Windsor Hotel, I make my way across the beach to what looks like a trailhead of sorts. Years ago the whirlpool was accessible from the rim of the gorge by means of an incline railway, and likely the break in the leafy canopy above the trailhead marks the remains of the tracks. With luck the old ties will serve as footholds while I climb the bank leading out of the gorge.

My hunch is correct, and soon enough I am clambering up a still solid set of tracks. I move quickly, not stopping to smooth my hair or skirt, or wipe the dirt from my hands. When a small fox rustles the underbrush, I am startled and my hands fly to my chest. My gaze settles on a rough path of trampled ferns leading away from the tracks. Twenty feet from where I stand, the path ends at a weather-beaten chest. I notice the set of initials carved into the lid: “T. C.” And it is of no surprise to me that Thomas Cole would not have a middle name, also that he would know about the old tracks and have a secret place to stash his gear.

As I open the lid and prop it against a beech tree, I am expecting to find camping equipment, or maybe fishing line, lures, and bait. But the interior is filled with heavy rope, straps and belts, and a folded canvas tarpaulin, none of which immediately makes sense. I lift the tarpaulin. It is heavier than I expected, and I hold it by the corners, allowing its contents to spill out. A large, many-pronged hook lands in the underbrush, and I make the connection between it and an object I heard described many years ago.

At the academy, when I was still in the little school, a girl called Mary Morse, whose father was the local undertaker, told me about grappling hooks. “Like a fishhook,” she said, “except big.” The sister supervising our dorm had nodded off, and the cane with which she struck the floor to silence us had slipped to her feet. Mary wriggled to the edge of her bed closest to mine and asked whether I was awake. She went on to tell me about a body—she called it a floater—her father had recently nailed shut inside a pine coffin. She said it had been in the river at least a week. No one could say exactly how long, but great gobs of flesh were missing; the skin was too rotten to withstand the tug of the grappling hook dragging it to shore. The picture I conjured was terrifying and nearly complete—a stark white body, folded at the waist; a V being dragged through the river; arms, legs, and a mass of hair trailing behind.

“Your father has one?” A grappling hook seemed the right sort of paraphernalia for a man who regularly shaved corpses and forced eyelids shut.

“The man who pulls out the floaters does,” she said. “He brings them to the back door. Mother says he can’t come in.”

“Why not?”

“Mother says he’s the worst sort, waiting at the river day and night, hoping someone will throw himself over the falls, just so he can get drunk as a skunk.”

I muddled up my face.

“Father pays a bottle of rye whiskey for a floater,” she said, “and the town pays him fifteen dollars to bury it.”

I sink to the forest floor as images fill my head: hands easing free a grappling hook jammed between a pair of ribs; a naked breast tattered by an errant toss; a bulky tarpaulin slung over a shoulder, the juices from within soaking through to the jacket beneath.

So this is something Tom does.

Isabel had said a shopgirl could do better, and all we had known then was that Tom rode the trolley and wore the clothes of a workingman. Kit had guessed at his livelihood, becoming ever more dubious, even when he appeared something as harmless as a fisherman. Mother had not wanted him coming to the door back when he only seemed a regular fellow, nice enough to help with a trunk. Had they known then what I do now, their distaste would have been tenfold, a revulsion that matches my own.

Tom is one of those men, bleary-eyed and lecherous, waiting at the whirlpool for a floater to turn up. Never mind the rotting flesh, the smashed skulls, the severed limbs. Snag the floater. Haul it in. Cart the bloated, sloppy, stinking mess all the way to Morse and Son, and use the back door. Collect the bottle of rye whiskey. Knock back a swig, and then another. And another after that, because who wants to remember a pair of eye sockets nibbled empty by the fish?

Dickens is correct: Every human creature is a profound secret and mystery to every other. It seems the saddest thing in the world to know he is right. And I want to cry, to drum my fists upon the earth, but more than that, I want to be rid of this place.

I resume my climb up the track, one heavy foot in front of the other. When I reach for my rosary, I find my pocket is empty. The rosary is in my bedroom, forgotten, hidden beneath my underclothes.

I do not look up from the ties and know I am out of the gorge only when the tracks come to an end. Forsaking the whirlpool, the gorge, the river below, I step onto River Road. Chin still tucked to my chest, I stride toward home.

But when I arrive, there is no solace to be had, only red-faced Mother, continuing to bellow even as she sees me cross the yard, her words tangled and hardly making sense, also Father, his shirtfront dribbled with the rye whiskey-stinking vomit pooled on the veranda steps.

There is still the offer from Edward. Good, kind, sober, set-for-life Edward, who can save me, my family, from the wrecks our lives have become.