Ellie wheels Kenny around Weller Lake in his stroller. The March morning is bright and warm. Some of the trees show a faint touch of green. In the clear water, silver fingerlings dart as one.

“Look at all the little fishies,” Ellie says to Kenny. “Can you see them?”

“Bud,” Kenny says, pointing to the picnic table in the shelter halfway around Weller Lake. “Bud.”

At first Ellie doesn’t see. She pushes the stroller over the wobbly wooden bridge and up to the shelter. A small brownish-orange bird perches on the table. “Oh, yes!” Ellie says. “Bird. You have sharp eyes. That’s a bird, a little baby bird.”

The bird takes two hops along the table top.

“I wonder if he can fly,” Ellie says. “I hope he’s not injured.”

Ellie and Kenny watch the bird until it takes off and disappears into the trees.

“Oh!” Ellie says. Her spirits have lifted. “Okay, let’s get you home for lunch.” She wheels Kenny’s stroller back over the wobbly bridge and along the gravel path to the parking lot. As she puts Kenny into his car seat, she says, “Maybe someday we can have a picnic out here. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Kenny and Ellie visit Weller Lake several times in the following weeks. “Do you think our bird will be here today?” Ellie always asks Kenny. “Do you spot him?”

“Bud,” Kenny says.

“Yes, Bud the bird. Our pal. Maybe if we left some bread for him.”

Sometimes the bird is there, sitting on the picnic table, and sometimes he isn’t. Ellie and Kenny wait on the wooden bridge. The silver fingerlings are growing. Some are fat as a man’s penis. The trees are full of leaves. Bud the bird pecks the bread they’d left and shoots into the air, into the leafy trees.

On the Saturday before Memorial Day the boathouse opens. The boy who works there waves at Ellie as she wheels Kenny by. He looks familiar. “Maybe someday we can rent a boat,” Ellie says to Kenny. “A nice green rowboat. We could glide across the lake so smooth and serene.” Ellie remembers the creak of oars when Gary rowed her on their honeymoon the summer before Kenny was born. “Maybe we could catch a fish,” she says to Kenny. “A big fat fish, and fry him up for dinner.” Gary’s fishing rod was probably still somewhere in the closet. And the boy at the boathouse might know about bait. But do they make car seats for boats? Ellie has a nervous thought. She pushes Kenny back to the parking lot. “Oh, dear. We forgot to check on Bud.”

Ellie and Ken do not return to Lake Weller until July. On a hot hazy morning, they have the gravel path to themselves. The stroller is harder to push. “Oh, honey, you’re growing so big,” Ellie says. “Would you like to walk for a while?” She lifts Kenny out of the stroller, hugs him, and sets him on the path. Now the stroller rolls easily. “Do you think our bird will still be there?” Ellie asks. “We forgot the bread again, didn’t we?”

As they approach the wooden bridge and the nearby picnic shelter, Ellie looks across the lake at the boathouse. The boy has his shirt off. His skin is bronze. He drags a sleek silver canoe across the grass towards the water. Ellie shields her eyes to see better, and a shadow swoops down, slicing just past her head.

Ellie barely has time to shriek before the shadow wheels and dives directly at her. Ellie turns and ducks. The orange-brown bird bashes her. Its beak draws blood.

Ellie gathers Kenny up into her arms, his face pressed against her breast, and runs. She doesn’t stop running until she is in the parking lot. She puts Kenny down. She is panting. She is bleeding. “Oh, honey,” she says, picking Kenny up and hugging him.

At home she cleans the wound as best she can. “It’s just a scratch, really,” she tells Mrs. Ketteridge from next door. “I’ll be back soon,” she tells Kenny. “You be good for Mrs. Ketteridge. I’m just going to rescue our stroller.”

She has Gary’s tennis racket with her, just in case. She walks carefully down the path. She tries to steel herself. The bird’s not to blame, she tells herself. Probably just protecting a nest of new babies. But she’ll bash its brains out if she has to.

The stroller is not there. Ellie’s shoulders slump. The tennis racket hangs limp. Bud the bird is not there, either. For an eerie moment Ellie thinks Bud has made off with the stroller. Such a ridiculous thought. Ellie’s slight smile is swallowed by a hollow, sour feeling in her tummy.

A strange haze hovers overhead. The air is bright but fuzzy, clear but hard to breathe, as if it were made of white stone. Ellie squeezes the tennis racket and marches toward the boathouse. The boy is there, big as life. “Hey,” he says, “want to rent a boat? It’s going to storm.”

“That’s okay,” Ellie answers. “I was just wondering if you’ve seen a stroller.”

“Not really,” the boy says. “We’ve just got boats here. We used to have bikes. Too many of them got wrecked or disappeared.”

“It was down there.” Ellie points the tennis racket toward a place just past the wooden bridge. “I left it there this morning when the bird attacked us. Me and Kenny.”

“Sorry,” the boy says. “I haven’t seen it. My dad’s a cop, but out here there’s no jurisdiction. Would you like to go for a boat ride? On the house.”

Out on the lake the boy doesn’t say anything. He just rows. His arm muscles work the oars. The muscles in his thighs clench with each pull. The boat glides beneath the stone gray sky. The shore seems far away.

“Are you thinking something?” the boy says.

“Not really,” Ellie says.

“You had a funny smile. Were you wondering what it might be like to kiss me?”