Remember it, I thought. Please. Hold onto this one. Hold onto it as long as you can.
The next day, at five o’clock, we walked down the hill to The Gull’s Nest.
Carol was waiting at the top of the deck stairs.
She was exactly like her voice. Short and solid, maybe seventy, with cropped gray hair and a weathered face and the faded blue anchor tattoo on her forearm. She was wearing a black dress that she clearly hated, tugging at the collar.
When she saw me, she stopped tugging. She just looked at me.
Then she opened her arms.
I walked straight into them. We’d never met. We’d only had one phone call, and I’d hung up on her halfway through. But she hugged me like she’d known me for thirty years.
“There she is,” she said into my ear. “The wife.”
