I opened my eyes. My finger was resting on the middle of a paragraph in a chapter I’d read a couple of nights earlier.

Before I even studied the passage, I knew it was going to be significant because there was a word in it that I hadn’t known when I read it the first time, and I’d lightly circled it in pencil so I could look it up. Once I did, I was so taken with the word that I added it to the list I was saving to show October.

The passage went like this:

Each morning I go out with my tea and I check on the fig tree and I think, Do what you want, my dear, but only if it means going back to the house, only if it keeps the fear of saudade close and even closer than that, do you hear me?

There was no equivalent to the word “saudade” in the English language, but the translation I found defined it as “a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.” It went on to explain that saudade was sometimes described as “a nostalgia for something that never was.”

I don’t remember walking out the door, down the steps, or across the yard. I only remember that when I got to October’s house I walked in without knocking and found her in the kitchen making a grilled cheese sandwich. She’d showered; I could tell because her hair looked like a wet rope hanging over her shoulder. And she’d changed into a pair of sweatpants and a loose, silky tank top. Her back was to me, and I could see the tops of the letters I’d written there, a little faded but still legible.

CHOICE.

The sound of the door startled her. She spun around and her hand went to her heart. “Jesus, Joe. You scared me.”

Diego moseyed over from the living room floor and nuzzled up beside me, wagging his baseball-bat tail.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” I blurted.

She tilted her head to the side, her face a rictus of expressions I couldn’t discern.

“I’ve tried and I can’t. It’s like you turned on some faucet in me and I have no way to turn it off.”

I thought for once that I might surprise her, but she didn’t look surprised. She looked cautious. She shut off the burner, moved the skillet to the adjacent burner, and leaned back, her hands behind her on the counter like she was going to hop up onto it.

Fear began to rise in me, starting at my feet and filling up my body, as if I’d stepped into a pool of it.

“Say something,” I mumbled.

“I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with this information. Because I’m assuming that’s all it is. Information.”

I took a step forward and noticed her face was pale and shiny, her eyes red from scrubbing off all the makeup.