“It is, isn’t it?” Colleen said as she touched his cheek. “Listen, you’re so sweet for coming by with my favorite croissant and listening. I’ve never told it before and your kindness allowed me to let it out. Thank you. I promise I’ll call when I return, but I can’t focus on anything else but getting to South Carolina right now.” Colleen kissed him and walked him to the door. “I have to book a flight now.”

“You’re always on the next plane out. Is that how it’s always going to be?”

“I don’t know.” She propped the door open with her foot.

He shook his head. “Someday, Colleen Donohue, I believe you’re going to have to feel something.” And with that he was gone, his shadow retreating down the dark stairwell, his back straight and his hand waving over his shoulder.

Feel something? Damn, she’d felt plenty, she wanted to tell him. Plenty enough to last a lifetime. Feeling things was overrated at best. She gently closed the door and went straight back to the computer, chose a flight, entered her credit card number and slumped into the couch to text her brother with the information.

“Whoa,” she exhaled into her empty apartment. She’d told the story; she’d said it out loud; and now, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, Colleen felt the fracture lines inside her chest. There was an ache and need for her family that flowed over her with a panicked sense of lost time.

When you return home, she’d written in the article, take with you everything you’ve seen and learned.

But how could she do that?

This was a question most women would ask their mothers, but two years ago they’d lost a youthful fifty-eight-year-old Elizabeth Donohue to a silent killer—a brain aneurism that had sent her crashing to the family’s dock while she was dragging a crab trap out of the water in preparation for a lawn party that evening. Dad had been cleaning the picnic table. Teamwork, they always said, was an important ingredient in a marriage.

As the Irish said, two shorten the road.

Dad had raced to his wife, but it had been too late. It had been too late the millisecond it happened. Elizabeth was gone, the rope still in her hand, a smile on her face and guests on their way for fresh crab.

Shane had called Colleen that time, also. His voice shattered in grief, he’d told her, “I already bought you a plane ticket home.”