“Through the thorny brambles we go,” he said aloud, though alone, as if she was still with him. Eight years no, and he still felt her presence, as if she had been standing beside him, watching herself collapse through the liminal calm of the water’s horizon, gazing with rapt curiosity as the flailing moil ceased and her saturated body tumbled along riverbottom, cartwheeling through the undertow, moving in two place at once, both alive and dead. “