“Not the kind you remember,” Drew said. “This is an empty cooler full of ice for the fish. Good to see you, ladies.” He tipped his baseball hat, and Hutch and Drew were gone as if they’d never been there.

For long moments Sadie and I stared at each other, and then together, as if on some cue, we broke into laughter. I allowed the amusement to flow out of me, through me, and into that bay that was more moving light than moving water.

This was how the jubilee seemed to work; people came into and out of your space and water and then disappeared. You couldn’t feel them come, and you didn’t see them leave. A stranger turned into a friend and then vanished. Sadie and I sat on top of our cooler at the water’s edge—no longer trying to stay dry.

“I feel like I’m part of the bay,” I said in a soft whisper.

“We are. Tonight we are.” Sadie ran her fingers over the top of the water, shrimp scattering.

There are nights when the places and spaces in a life shift, disassemble, and then reassemble in the sliver of time between moments, between seconds. There are people who enter or reenter a life, who touch you or laugh with you in the middle of a jubilee, in the midst of nature’s sacrifice, so that your life couldn’t be the same even if you wanted it to be so.

That is what happened that night.

Excerpt from Lillian Ashford’s Journal
New Year’s Eve 1961
Twenty-one Years Old

After the Jubilee, our love was stronger than any force of man or nature. Or so I’d believed. We swam in the ocean and sat around the pool drinking ice-cold gin and tonics with slices of cucumber floating on the top. We held hands and made love—or I was making love, I don’t know now what it was for him. And this is the sorrowful part. When I look back, I hear myself in the middle of it telling Him of my love, and I know now He never used that word: love. He said “adore” and “What would I do without you?” and “best friend,” but never that, never love. How could I have not noticed that He never said that word?

Because here is why: I felt Love in every touch, in every motion, in every look. He couldn’t stay away from me for even an hour, finding me at the shoreline or the dinner table or the back porch of the Summer House. Our skin made of magnets that drew together with and against our will. How could that not have been love?

We whispered and sat in the back of bars and secret meetings to help the movement, our fingers entwined, our skin moist with need.