Now you sit yourself down, sweetheart, and don't go near that water 'til I've had my say. That little pond out back of the Landry farm — looks like nothing, doesn't it. Looks like a puddle a duck wouldn't trouble with. But that water's older than this town, older than the feuds, older than me, and Lord knows that's saying something. It doesn't take you where you want to go, honey. It takes you where you're needed, and those are 'most never the same place. I've watched it swallow a little boy whole and hand him back a grown man two hundred years late. I've watched it give a grieving woman five more minutes with the love of her life and call it mercy. It'll show you your mother before she was your mother, your daddy before the ground took him, every soul you ever lost still walking around like the world never ended. And it'll break your heart doing it, because you can look all you want and you can't change a blessed thing — what's done was always going to be done. That's the cruelty and the kindness of it both. You'll want to fix it. Everybody wants to fix it. But the only way out is through, darlin' — I've said it near a hundred years and I'll say it once more for you. So go on, then. Leave your mark. Just remember an old woman warned you: that water gives, and that water takes, and it never once tells you which it's fixing to do.

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