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first week we lived here I couldn’t figure out which house was even ours. Once I even walked up to the wrong house and walked in the front door. Thank goodness nobody was home and I saw the furniture, realized it wasn’t our house and left before anybody noticed.
    It was all so different from our farmhouse. Our house was really old and made of stones from the fields and timbers from our forest. And it was so big that you could be in one part of the house without hearing everything that was going on everywhere else . . . not like here.
    â€œI could just stay here all day,” Jack said, spinning a bit in his tube under the hot sun.
    â€œWe could do that. Mom isn’t going to be home for hours and hours and hours.”
    Jack just smiled. “Let’s get out of the current or we’ll drift all the way down to the lake. Follow me.”
    We both started using our arms to paddle. Jack aimed toward a little island in the middle of the creek. He and his inner tube partially disappeared underneath the branches of a large weeping willow that dominated the little chunk of land. Its branches reached right down to the surface of the water. I floated in after him, and I was immediately struck by howmuch cooler it felt in the shade of the tree.
    â€œThis is perfect,” Jack said. He was hanging on to some of the branches.
    I reached up and grabbed a branch, looping it around my wrist. The current wasn’t very strong and I was held in place. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the quiet of the day. It was hard to find quiet where we lived now. There was always something close by—a person or a car or even an airplane flying overhead.
    â€œHow far are we from Lake Ontario?” I asked.
    â€œNot too far I don’t think. You see the bridge there?”
    I looked over my shoulder and between the branches dangling down into the water. I could make out a wooden bridge in the distance, crossing over the creek.
    â€œThat’s the railroad bridge,” Jack told me. “Those are the tracks we were climbing up to last night.”
    A shiver ran up my spine. Lying there, massaged by the gentle water, I’d momentarily forgotten about yesterday. And that was strange because I’d spent a good part of the day thinking about it.
    â€œDo you see that?” Jack asked.
    â€œSee what?”
    â€œThere’s somebody on the bridge.”
    I spun around so I was facing the bridge. There was somebody—it looked like a man—standing at the very centre.
    â€œWhat do you think he’s doing?” I asked.
    â€œProbably just doing what we were trying to do yesterday, taking a shortcut,” Jack suggested.
    â€œBut he’s just standing there looking over the edge and— there’s another man!”
    A second person had appeared on the bridge—they looked the same, dressed all in black. And then a third man joined them.
    â€œThey must be some sort of railroad crew,” Jack said.
    â€œThat makes sense,” I agreed. “They must be inspecting the tracks.”
    Suddenly a fourth man appeared, dressed in the same manner. But instead of being on the top like the others he was climbing on the trestles. As he started to climb up, two of the men on the bridge climbed down to meet him.
    â€œWhat are they doing now?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “I can’t really tell . . . are they putting something on the bridge?”
    â€œI can’t really see . . . it looks like some sort of . . . I don’t know, almost like pieces of wood or something.” There were dark patches on the wood now where something had been put in place.
    â€œNo, not wood . . .” Jack said.
    â€œWhatever it is, they must be guys who do bridge repairs.”
    â€œI guess,” he agreed, though he didn’t sound too sure.
    â€œWhat else could it be?”
    Jack didn’t say anything, but he had a look on his face, the one that always made me think he knew