Once he had earned enough overtime to take the family to a lake, where my mother dared him to jump off a wooden pier.

“Did he do it?” I asked.

“I jumped,” he said, pretending to be offended.

“Your mother laughed so hard she toppled into the water after me.”

I had never known that Joanne.

To me she was always tired, always cooking, always worried someone might search a drawer.

And here she was, laughing at a lake.

“Do you have any pictures?”