“I wish I could be a kid, like eight years old. You don’t know about the pain of love yet, and you just want a puppy or something.”

And...

“It’s the first thing you think of when you open your eyes, then you can’t stop thinking about it, I lost her, I hurt her, it’s all my fault.”

And...the worst...

“If I was sure that there was really a heaven, and she would be there, and everybody there was all happy, maybe I would end it. But I have to give this world a chance. I have to give my future a chance. That’s only right.”

If women waiting for their number to be called in purgatory would be talking about shoes, men in purgatory would definitely be talking about sports. I remembered how, for an anniversary long ago, I had given Jep a list I had made when we were just dating, which I’d kept in an old cigar box of letters.

After Jep stopped laughing, his comment was, “Enthusiastic?”

I’m sure Jep never imagined struggling to try to bond with Stefan after some traumatic estrangement. Never imagined struggling to try to bond with Stefan at all—or with anyone else. For Jep, the world threw open its arms. He never fretted his looks or his style or his goals. My father called him “Everybody’s All American,” with just a slight sizzle of sarcasm, although my family embraced Jep as their own from day one. Jep’s own parents, John and Paula Christiansen, lived in England for most of Jep’s adult life, where Paula taught at the London School of Economics, and the Demetriou family became his default clan. My sister Phoebe always said that if Jep hadn’t been a coach, he should have been a priest, like in an old Bing Crosby movie. People who came into his harbor felt graced. He had so many Coach of the Year plaques from his different schools, he could have built a shed out of them. He kept every single one. Over the years, many times, he turned to me at night and said in a tone of wonder that he still couldn’t believe that he had the great privilege of doing what he loved for money.

It surprised me how keenly I missed the crisp, sharpened-pencil focus of my own classroom and campus home. But this would be a year spent on tilling my own garden—in a number of different ways. I was right where I needed to be, or so I consoled myself, and every day that passed only seemed to emphasize that truth.