When the phone rang a week after the funeral and HUTCH O’BRIEN appeared on the caller ID, I stared at it for the longest time, as if an apparition had filtered into my kitchen and into my life. Which in many ways it had.

I didn’t answer that call, and I waited two full hours before I listened to the message.

“Hey, Ellie, I hope you and your family are doing well. I really don’t want to put pressure on you to talk about your mom when I know how you must be grieving, but this exhibit deadline is fast approaching; I just need some final answers. If you can, will you please call me back?”

He left his number and I wrote it on a scrap of paper, folding it into a neat square and placing it in the side pocket of my purse.

I stood on a tightrope between the two choices—to call him or not to call him—unbalanced and sure to fall into memories. I know everyone has a love story. I don’t feel any better or different that Hutch and I have one. I just know this one is mine.

We’d met in what would seem the most ordinary circumstances. The most casual way people in their twenties ever meet—at a bar with friends. Nothing unusual or special about that. But everything was different—the way my smile shook; the way I wanted to touch the scar on his face; the way I stumbled over words inside my mouth; the way time stretched around us, elongating.

The bar and the friends and the noise faded, and there was only the man I saw standing in front of me. Sadie had approached me and hollered over the band and the noise, “I’m leaving.” I nodded at her as if I didn’t know her, as if she weren’t my roommate and my ride back to the dorm.

I finally reached out and touched his cheek. “This scar. How did you get it?”

He placed his hand on top of mine. “A dog bite. I was ten.”

“Oh,” I said.

With his hand over mine, he pulled me toward his face and lips and toward our first kiss.

Three days after his message, I picked up the phone and dialed the now crumpled phone number. I sat on my back porch and stared out over the pool, which no one had swum in for almost a year. The phone rang until I was sure voice mail would pick up. I had a practiced message, but then his voice—live—came on the line and was breathless.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi, Hutch. This is Ellie Calvin. Is this a bad time?”

He laughed, a sound somehow both deep and melodic. “No, this is not a bad time. I just ran in from outside. My damn tomato plants are covered in some kind of boll weevil or demon.”