“Love, I think the record ended. Want to pick something else out?”

The sound of his wife’s voice from the other room rouses Walter from a sleepy daze. He’s lounged comfortably into the old leather club chair, nearly succumbing to a Sunday afternoon nap. It’s not a rare occurrence when he’s up at the lake.

Walter smiles to himself. It doesn’t get any better than this.

With a quick yawn and stretch, he rises and approaches the turntable. It’s silently looping now, but has filled the cabin with warm tones all day. He fingers through a wooden crate of ancient vinyls looking for something a little more soulful. Fulfillingness’ First Finale should do it. Needle dropped, he wanders into the kitchen where Jessica is cutting up the watermelon they’d bought at the farmstand that morning.

Walter can’t resist fresh watermelon. Nor can he resist his wife, whose lush reddish hair has taken on a deliciously golden hue thanks to the late afternoon sun rays beaming through the back porch windows. He slides up behind her body at the kitchen island to steal a kiss and melon spear from over her shoulder.

“Wally, please!” Jessica says through a gentle laugh. “At least let me put down the knife first.”

She only calls him Wally when she’s in a particularly silly mood. Or when she’s had a little too much to drink. Walter isn’t sure which it was at the moment and he doesn’t care.

“C’mon,” she says, grabbing a tray. “Let’s take this down to the dock.”

Walter switches over to the outside speakers and follows his wife out through the squeaky screen door. The dock off the shoreline below is as perfectly well-worn as just about everything else at the house. At the far end waits a pair of weathered Adirondack chairs. From there, the sight of brilliant sunlight reflecting at just the right low angles off gentle lake ripples reminds him of countless childhood summers spent here in the country. It always does and always will.

Walter smiles to himself. It doesn’t get any better than this.

The two use a few quiet moments to settle into the placidity of it all. Jessica stretches a hand across chairs and places it on Walter’s. “I can’t believe you learned to swim right here,” she says with a giggle. “It must have been so cute.”

Then, after a pause: “I really hope our kids will one day, too.”

Walter breaks eye contact with the shimmering lake and beams in astonishment toward his wife. She’s been slow to warm to the idea of children. Until now. The sparkle in her emerald green eyes lets him know she means every word.

The old lake house is working its magic just as he has hoped. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Before he responds, a cool breeze rolls in off the lake, sending shivers across Walter’s exposed skin. He tells his wife he’s going in to flip over the record and asks if she’d like him to grab her a sweater.

Jessica doesn’t immediately respond. She becomes still, her hand chilled. Walter hesitates and asks again, to no reply.

Something isn’t right. He lifts from his chair and bends to kiss her freckled cheek.

Nothing. Panic sets in and Walter’s chest constricts. At long last, she replies: “Of course, this is only the floor model.”

Walter doesn’t understand. His voice rises in volume as he takes his wife by the shoulders, rustling her gently to motion. Something is wrong. Terribly and painfully wrong. Her frozen gaze seems distant, as if her mind is elsewhere. Or nowhere. He reaches for her hands, but feels nothing.

Jessica is no longer his. She is gone. Everything is gone.