The drawing showed a boat almost touching the garden wall. In later photographs, dry ground stretched below the house. When Marin found the sketch after her grandfather's death, she assumed he had exaggerated the view for a child.
An older shoreline plan placed water close to the wall before the reservoir receded. The drawing was plausible for its date, although its scale remained informal. A letter mentioned tying a small boat where the garden steps ended.
Marin visited the house and found the steps leading into rough grass. The changed landscape explained the difference without requiring either the drawing or the photographs to be false. Her grandfather had recorded one state of a place that no longer looked like his memory.
She dated the drawing as carefully as the evidence allowed and placed it beside a current photograph. The pair made the lost water visible without painting it back into the present. At the house, the owner still called the lower gate the landing, carrying an older geography in a word long after the view had stopped explaining it.