He had to double back but Harry found the path through the scrubby pine that led to the northern start of the cliff walk. It seemed narrower than he remembered, rose hip and winterberry bushes scraping at his legs, and he wondered if anyone used it anymore. Maybe the path was on private land now, the owners hoping it would be forgotten. Still, it took him out to the cliff walk, with its view along the rocky shore to the half-moon beach of the harbor. This was his father’s usual walk, and the one he ended his life on. Harry walked a quarter mile, slowly, scanning for any sign of where, exactly, his father had fallen. He wondered if there might be police tape at the scene, then dismissed the idea. It wasn’t a crime scene. It had been an accident. He took a break and sat on one of the wooden benches along the path. There was a small metal plaque on the bench saying that it was given in memory of Blanche Audet, who had died in 1981. Harry stared out toward the ocean, and thought of how many times his father must have taken this very walk, and wondered if he’d ever sat on this bench. The view was beautiful, but there was something bleak about staring out to the ocean, as well. All that crushing, grey water that had never changed and never would. Except for the new resort hotel on the far edge of Kennewick Harbor Beach, this view must have looked the same to Blanche Audet, and whoever was here before Blanche, and whoever was here long before this path was carved out of the rock.

Harry’s phone vibrated in his jeans pocket but he ignored it. He stayed on the bench until he was cold, pulling his sweater on, then stayed awhile longer.

When he finally stood, his legs felt stiff. He was out of shape, he realized, having spent all the last semester writing his thesis, crouched over his laptop. He’d stopped swimming, and he hadn’t played squash since before Christmas.

He checked his phone. Several friends from college had texted or called. He put the phone back in his pocket, feeling irrational, unfair anger at their concern. They cared for him, but Harry dreaded the inevitable conversations. He wasn’t always good at talking. Words and sentences filled his brain—he felt as though he was constantly narrating his own life—but bringing those words from inside his brain and out into the world had always been difficult for him. When he was younger he’d suffered from a lateral lisp, his words often coming out with embarrassing hisses. Speech therapy had corrected it, teaching him to let the words flow from the top of his tongue, and not from its sides, but the lisp had done its damage.