And how complicated it must be for people these days, with all those devices and chatter—the way you can see where the call comes from, trace it, even tape it. And yet people still find ways to cheat and creep and bury their bones. I am glad I grew up with a rotary phone. I am glad I grew up with silence. I’m glad Frank and I found our way back.

Sometimes lately, here in the blurry buzz of air-conditioning, the soft, cushioned peach-colored carpet under my feet, the Easter egg men and the stark ugly pine trees out the window in the glaring heat, I find my mind takes me home. My first home. I am in Waltham, with the drip, drip, drip of the bathroom sink. My father had tied a cloth around the pipe to muffle the sound until it could be fixed, and yet I could still hear it. And on another night, barely spring outside, he took a hammer to the faucet and then stood back, an arching spray of water covering him and all of the bathroom. He stood there, hammer in hand, and I couldn’t tell if the water on his face was coming from without or within.

I worry about Frank. Every day, I feel him slipping from me; I imagine each day takes him a little bit closer to that place, pulling him like the Sirens calling him into the rocks. Hastening. I look for messages. I look for signs. Every day I think, “It could be today.” I look out and see the bright sunlight and think, “Yes, he would choose a day like today,” a happy, bright day, a day and time opposite from that long-ago accident that changed his whole life. Or I look out in the dark of winter and think: “No, this is it.” He will choose a day to match that of that December night so very long ago. They both make sense, both choices, and we as humans like to make sense. When it rains on a funeral, we say the universe is crying, and when the sun shines, we say the dearly departed is smiling from beyond. Rain on a wedding (like yours, Becca) they say is good luck, and yet on that sunny beautiful day, no one says, “Oh no, I was hoping for a little rain for good luck.”