I’m glowering into the distance, contemplating how I’ll do this, when two approaching figures sharpen in my view. It’s getting dark, but I can still see them. Something about the way they move is familiar.

Of course. It’s Saturday night, Edward and Elizabeth’s picnic hour. And here they are—not gone like I’d feared. My heart lifts.

She is slight with cropped, silvery hair and a smart trench coat. He is scarcely taller than her, in professorial glasses and thick-soled orthopedic shoes. When he smiles, he’s a dashingly handsome older man.

They’re older. But it’s them.

Elizabeth has her arm threaded through the same picnic basket, but she’s added a cane since I last saw her. Edward, as usual, bears a tiny folding table and two chairs. I watch as he helps her step up onto the grass. It’s damp from the morning’s rain, but as usual, they have come prepared. As Edward unfolds the table and chairs, Elizabeth lays out a white tablecloth, carefully smoothing it down. He lights candles. She produces a box of fried chicken, a jar of pickles, and a bottle of wine. The whole scene is impossibly charming, but the best part is when they sit down and take each other’s hands across the table. For a while, they just talk, and though I long to, I’ve never drawn near enough to eavesdrop.

I’m so glad to see them. It feels like a sign from the universe that not everything has gone to hell.

I take out my phone and snap a quick picture of the couple in profile, of their glowing candlelit picnic. I’m about to send it to Ryan, because this will be us one day.

But then I imagine him at his senator’s birthday dinner in D.C., the one I was supposed to attend. How he might not be pleased to get this photo.

I put my phone away. I blow a kiss to Edward and Elizabeth, then jog toward home in the New York night.

“I’m about to tell you something,” I say to BD the next morning over brunch at an Ethiopian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. “But first I need to swear you to secrecy.”

BD puts down her menu and smiles. “This is why I need to come to New York more often. Do you know the last time your father or your brother started off a conversation half so well? I think Hillary’s husband was in office.”

BD’s in town for just a few hours, passing through the city on a road trip with a group of friends she calls the League of Widows. This afternoon, they’re on their way to Niagara Falls.