August came in on the same heat that had carried July, the lake deep and tired of the sun, the reeds standing tall and dry at their tops, the garden heavy with its season — tomatoes coming in faster than they could eat them, the peas long done, the rose holding its last buds against the warm brick as if it knew what the calendar said. Aaron stood at the study window in the long evenings and looked at the water, and the water looked back the way it always did, patient, and he thought about the promises that were still standing, one of them north.
The collection went to the printer the first week of August, in the plain box Sophie packed herself, the manuscript wearing the page she had set apart all summer — the epigraph at last revealed, because a book has to show its face before it goes out into the world. On the title page, in small italics, beneath the title *The Voice Is the Water*: *Stories should cross. — Elena Marchetti.*
