I was there with a friend too—one of my roommates, another painter—whose name was Sebby Quint. Sadly, he passed away earlier this year after a peculiar accident. Disposing of his few belongings has been complicated (he was estranged from his family, and never married), and as the contents of his studio passed to me I am presently trying to find homes for the work that mattered so much to him. Hence this package. There are a number of sketchbooks, but the contents date this one to the summer we all met. A few pages are of such a personal nature that I felt the entire book should go to your friend. I am hoping that you two are still in touch, and that you can convey this to her along with my best wishes and hopes that she is well.

May I just say here that I have enjoyed your Wonders of the Shore very much, and that I remember some of what you so generously showed our motley crowd during those happy evenings? The place is, sadly, very much changed since Mrs. Thaxter’s death, but I hope you too remember it fondly.

Henrietta couldn’t read the signature—a short first name, a last name beginning with a P? Sebby had had two roommates; she couldn’t picture either one: Why should this person know about Sebby’s death, when she did not? Although they’d not stayed in touch, for sixteen years he’d been as present to her imagination as Daphne, leaping to mind unexpectedly when a wave lapped at a hull with a particular sound, or a cedar branch shook off the raindrops beading up on its needles.

For a minute she tried to absorb the enormous fact of Sebby’s death: hopeless. He was gone, yet the image of him in her mind remained the same, his voice still humming in her ear, his touch still warming her skin. The sketchbook, opened, smelled of him and of the sea. There were the cliffs, waves foaming through the trap dike. Rock pools, landing dock, breakwater protecting the bathing pool from the rougher sea; within the pool, some children on a raft. Three girls dressed alike in blue, regarding a little boy. A mass of vines enfolding a porch, the vine leaves themselves, some small white flowers and twisted stems. A man—she remembered that man!—frowning intently as he drew a bow over his violin strings. A blank page and then . . .