I said, “Sorry for—”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Glenna replied, rubbing the back of my neck.

I drove over to a spot by her gate, popped the trunk, and took my iPhone so I could shoot Elaine and Charlie a text.

“Need help?” Glenna asked.

I shook my head and flopped her dress bag over my shoulder, grasped the handle of her suitcase, and used my elbow to shut the trunk.

When we walked into the house, Glenna tapped in her alarm code, and I put my iPhone on the pedestal table to the side of the staircase and carried her things up to her bedroom. On my way down I started thinking about the New Year’s Eve that I’d returned her calfskin key case and, with my throat so constricted by sorrow that I thought I’d choke, hauled my belongings out to the GTO in the shopping bags that Glenna had piled up on the bottom of her closet, all the while hoping that she would ask me to stay, and now that sorrow and that hope and those ghostly footfalls reverberated in my memory.

Glenna said, “Can I give you lunch or a cup of coffee?”

“Thanks,” I said, noticing that her mascara had run, leaving squiggly black trails on her face. “But I don’t wanna get caught in traffic on 95. I’ll stop somewhere.”

Glenna slipped her hand inside my jacket and stuck a piece of paper in my shirt pocket. “My numbers and e-mail. If you want to be in touch.”

“I’ll be in touch. Let me get Alex settled and—”

“It was great seeing you, Gordon.”

“Same here.”

“And I’ll send Elaine a thank-you note. I’m so happy I met her and her family.”

I put the palm of my hand against her face. “Your mascara,” I said, remembering that night, so many years ago, when Glenna had wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her terry-cloth robe as the moonlight shone through the bay window behind her.

“I know,” she said.

I had to get out of there and gave Glenna a quick hug and quicker kiss. We said good-bye and I walked out the door, closing it gently behind me.

I inhaled the wintry air and started down the slippery steps, and again I recalled that New Year’s Eve—my conviction that I’d never come back to this place and how I’d mourned the love and comfort and pleasure that I’d discovered here with Glenna even before I made it to my car, and that feeling of loss had been so excruciating it doubled me over.

Yet I had come back. Not every conviction is impervious to the lessons and corrosion of time, and I could feel the past and present gathering together to become, if I was lucky, the future I desired. Out across the gray, whitecapped water of the creek the trees were bent under the weight of the snow, as though heavy with the weight of accumulated memories, and despite the crackling-cold wind of January, as I stood in the radiant sunshine, underneath a cloudless blue sky, it was possible to believe in spring.