His mother said she had taken the excursion alone. The ticket in her diary was marked two passengers. After her death, Sam wondered whether the companion was somebody she had deliberately kept out of the family story.
The boat operator's surviving ledger recorded one adult and one child. Sam was too young to remember the trip, but he appeared in a photograph taken at the landing, holding a paper cup much too large for his hands. On the back, his mother had written first day out by ourselves.
Alone had meant without her husband, who was working away. The phrase had changed shape as it passed through years of retelling. Sam had heard an isolated traveler where she remembered a parent managing a difficult day with a small child.
He put the ticket beside the photograph instead of inside the diary. For once, he could see himself as part of an experience that belonged primarily to her. The mysterious second passenger had not been a secret. He had simply forgotten that, before he could remember her, she already had a life full of memories of him.