Scooter walks back to me and continues, his gray-green eyes glowing. “And as kids in America we think we know it all. We’re told who we should be and what we should do and where we should live before we’ve figured it out ourselves. And that leads to some very...” He stops and cocks his head. “Let me think of a more delicate way to say it... That leads to some very messed-up adults.

“Being lost for a while is a good thing,” he says. “It allowed me to reevaluate my life and where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.”

“And you chose here?”

“So did you,” he says.

“So our parents were right?”

“Our parents and grandparents took great risk to find a place of peace here in Saugatuck,” he says. “We both felt it wasn’t big enough or good enough, didn’t we? What we did, though, was play by everyone else’s rules. You got married. I played football. You got a corporate job in Chicago. Who were we pleasing? And why? Most people sleepwalk through life playing the game. They’re like sheeple.”

“Sheeple?”

“Part people, part sheep,” he says, “following the herd mentality.” Scooter turns around and starts walking back toward the cottage. The north wind slaps our faces. “You’re lost right now, and that’s actually a good thing. It’s good to be scared, excited, alive, isn’t it?”

I slow and look at the patterns in the embankments. “I feel like that right now,” I say, pointing at them, “as though my entire soul is splayed open, and the world can see every scar, laugh line, pockmark, heartache that’s inside me.”

Scooter stops. “And that’s beautiful,” he says. Without warning, Scooter leans in and kisses me, ever so softly and briefly, on the lips.

“I didn’t expect that,” I say.

“I’ve always liked you, Adie Lou,” Scooter says. “Even when we were kids.”

“You were always my friend, Scooter,” I say.

“Isn’t that the best place to start?” he asks.

My eyes widen at his wisdom. I put my hands on his cheeks, rise up on my toes and kiss him again.

What am I doing, I think suddenly as my lips are on his. I’m in my forties. I can’t date again. I can’t go through the endless questions and the unearthing of our embarrassing quirks. Oh, God. I can’t endure the unveiling of my body and the awkward first sex.

I push Scooter away.

“I have to take this slowly,” I say, my mind suddenly filled with images of Sadie Collins and Isabel Archer, and the marriages that seemed to doom us all.

“Oh, she of mixed messages,” Scooter says. He looks at me. “But I understand. Me, too.”

“I’m a little overwhelmed right now,” I say. “I already have a man in my life... Sonny.”