“I’ll be a few more minutes. You go ahead. I’ll see you next week.”

“Okay then.” He planted his cane and pivoted, then headed back up toward the walkway. After a few steps he stopped and turned back to her. “I take it back, what I said earlier. It is good to see you, Violet.” He held her gaze and after a moment, he smiled. It was still shy, still kind, even after everything.

She bit her lip, but before she could speak, he was on his way up the beach, his back to her. She watched him until he crossed the walkway over the dunes and disappeared between the two towers, then she sat down, right where she was in the damp sand, her legs as weak as a Kleenex full of Jell-O.

* * *

Frank drove home from the training session on autopilot, his mind swimming in the years. It was all he could do to get home and make it out onto his back porch before collapsing. His bad leg was always nervous and jumpy after extended use, and he’d long ago learned the trick to alleviating the pain. Sitting in his favorite chair, he stretched his leg out in front of him and massaged the top of his thigh. After a minute or so of constant kneading, the jittery tension began to peel away. He only wished he could do the same thing to his heart.

Five years ago, on her sixty-first birthday, Frank’s wife, Alice, had woken up and told him she was moving to Texas.

“Am I moving too?” he asked, bleary and barely awake.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Frank. I love you, but I need something different.”

He sat up on his elbows and stared at her, reading everything written in her face. “Okay.”

Alice had indeed moved to Texas and started a new business as a professional home organizer. She also took up with a former rodeo cowboy. Two years later Frank got an invitation in the mail for their wedding, which took place in the center ring of a rodeo arena north of Abilene, where her new husband had won his tenth World Championship title.

He didn’t attend the wedding, but it wasn’t because he had hard feelings. He and Alice had had a perfectly fine marriage. They got along very well, made each other laugh, and respected each other’s careers—just the police work for Frank, though Alice had started so many LLCs over the years, Frank long ago lost count. They had two great kids and energetic grandchildren, and he was grateful for all she’d taught him about how to relate to and please a woman. But theirs was not a passionate marriage. He did love her, but was he ever fully in love with her? He didn’t think so, and if pressed, he thought she’d probably say the same thing.

So while there was a sense of disappointment and sadness when Alice left him, his heart kept on beating, air continued to flow in and out of his lungs, and in general the world kept spinning.