“Or she might think it strange that I’d make contact after all this time.” Kathleen felt a little shaky. “Maybe she won’t remember me.”

“Kathleen—” Martha was gentle “—she never stopped writing to you. If she didn’t want to hear from you, she would have stopped writing. If you asked me to guess, I’d say she’s been hoping to hear from you for a long time.”

“She might be dead.”

“Or she might be alive and thinking of her old friend.” Martha put down her napkin and stood up. “We’re finished here, so why don’t we go back to the room and do it right now?”

Josh grabbed his beer and Kathleen’s drink. “Good plan.”

And that was how Kathleen found herself sitting on the edge of her bed, between these two people who she’d grown so fond of. Martha on one side, Josh on the other, supporting her like bookends.

“This might be foolish. You can never go back.”

“This isn’t going back, Kathleen. It’s going forward.” Martha opened the message Liza had sent her, with Ruth’s address and phone number.

“That’s easy for you to say. I might regret it.”

This time it was Josh who spoke. “I think in life we tend to regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do, at least that’s how it has always been for me.”

Kathleen knew he was thinking of his brother. She gave his hand a squeeze but didn’t say anything. Her command of the English language and her diction might be superior to Martha’s, but her ability to say the right thing in emotional situations was vastly inferior. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Josh with her clumsy attempts at platitudes.

“And it’s because I don’t want you to feel regrets that we’re rafting on the Colorado River.” Martha earned herself a look from Josh before he turned back to Kathleen.

“If you call, I’ll treat us to the best bottle of wine you’ve tasted.”

“French?”

Josh winced. “Californian.”

Kathleen gave an exaggerated shudder. “What a life you must have led. But you’re right, of course. Let’s do this.” She sat up a little straighter. “Martha. Make that call.”

She held tightly to Josh’s hand as Martha dialed, and held her breath as Martha spoke to someone on the other end of the phone.

There was a long pause during which Kathleen’s chest ached and she concluded that her ability to handle intense emotion hadn’t improved with age.

Finally, Martha handed her the phone. Her eyes glistened.

“It’s Ruth. She can’t wait to talk to you.”

Kathleen took the phone, wishing she’d asked Josh and Martha to leave her alone to talk to her old friend, but they must have known instinctively that was what she wanted because Josh stood up and gave her shoulder a squeeze and Martha gave her a kiss on the cheek and whispered that they’d be “right outside.”

As the door clicked quietly shut behind them, Kathleen was left alone.