I spent the next few hours in the cabin reading, but I had trouble concentrating. I read the same paragraph seven times before putting the book aside to stare at the water, at the flotsam each wave deposited, the flotsam each wave reclaimed. The darkening and lightening of the pounded sand. The crabs rising from the beach, scurrying, disappearing. Gradually the coastline was eroding, but I couldn’t perceive it.

I held back from calling Alissa as long as I could, not wanting to push anything. But then, around noon, I called anyway.

“How’s the work going?”

“It’s going.”

“You need any help?”

“No!”

“Are you busy later?”

“No.”

“I’m just down the street if you need me.”

“Yeah. I know where you are.”

We made a plan for dinner at the Seagull, where I had first seen her, and after that I was finally able to calm down. I finished a chapter in my book, ate lunch at the vegan place, and took yet another walk on the beach.

This time I headed away from the light house, marching toward the bluff that sheltered the inlet from the southern wind gusts. As I walked beside the roaring surf, I remembered my mission. I was here to ritualize Judy’s passing, to remember her, wasn’t I?

She would not have been pleased with how things were going. She was a person who demanded fealty, doting attention. She nursed petty hurts. She had a tendency to pout. Unless death had transformed her into a different person, she would most probably disapprove of my behavior.

“Sorry,” I said into the wind.

“You could have waited,” I could hear her say. “Or at least do this somewhere else.”

“I have the chance now,” I said. “There might not be another time.”

“It’s disrespectful.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you.” Though it did.

The breeze stiffened and I turned back, following a young family wandering from driftwood to rock, dwarfed by the surf and sky.

Near the cabin, I came to a pile of driftwood. As commemoration of some kind, or perhaps as apology, I stacked some rocks on one of the larger slabs of wood. The clouds parted, and a band of sunlight fell onto the water. The faraway whitecaps became more vivid than the ones closer in.

I was waiting in the restaurant a few minutes before seven. Alissa’s hotel was directly across the street, so I could read the paper and watch the door from the corner of my vision. The waiting was much as I remembered from long ago, before Judy. I was nervous. I wondered if we would spend the night together. I wondered when the next kiss would be coming. I tried not to think about where our whole thing was going, but I couldn’t help toy with the idea that it might be more than a weekend tryst.