He continues to stand for a while, ankle-deep in the surf as he studies the midnight sky on the far horizon. Looking for Elizabeth, as Anne claims? No. He’s looking there because it’s beautiful, because it puts provincial Bay Bluff in context and reminds us that we’re part of a larger world. Way back when, we used to look at that horizon and imagine the places we’d go and the things we’d share. I know he has gone places since. I googled him after he called, of course I did. He got his degree in veterinary medicine at UC Davis, one of the best, and I’m sure he didn’t limit his travels to California. I’m sure he traveled. But I refuse to believe it was the same as we imagined, because I went places, too. It wasn’t worse without him. Just different.

But this is history, and here we are in Bay Bluff eyeing that same horizon. We often talked about the comfort of the sea. Surprising, given the circumstances, I feel it now.

Apparently Jack does, too, because, after several minutes, he joins me at the firepit. Once upon a time, we shared a log. Margo would glare each time, and while I cared, Jack did not. Now, though, he sits one log over with his legs sprawled.

We don’t talk. I might have remembered nights when this fire blazed and we were all here, or nights when it was just Jack and me. But I don’t want to remember. Right now, I’m the me who lives in the moment, and this moment is nostalgic in an undemanding way.

“Why did you call me?” I ask. I haven’t planned to speak, but there is my voice.

And then his. “Because I felt bad. I shouldn’t interfere with your daughter—”

“I mean in New York. After my father showed up at your house. Why did you call me and not Margo or Anne?”

“Because you’re the only one in the family with brains.”

“That’s not true.” Margo is the intellect of the family, and Anne is running a successful restaurant.

“The only one with common sense.”

“They have it.”

“Not when it comes to your parents.”

“And I do?” I make a guttural sound. “That’s rich.” When it comes to my parents, I’m raw emotion in an airtight jar.

“Well, you’re the only one I trust,” he states in the deep voice that I’d loved once.

And okay. Yes. Maybe that’s what I need to hear. Maybe I need to know that a little of the past remains for him, too. If I say it, of course, he may deny it, or start in on my father again. So I just nod and lower my arms around my legs, folding my body in two.

“Cold?” he asks.