We pour ourselves another cup of coffee and go out onto the verandah to sit on the glider. As we move it back and forth in unison as we used to, staring out at the crisp blue sky, bright sunlight, and green trees, I feel the grief start to recede once again and I’m confident that I’ll get another reprieve, faster this time. Maybe that’s what happens with this kind of grief. You get pockets of time without it and then it returns, knocks you on the floor, but you get up again and find your way back. I’ve heard the term cycle of grief, but I didn’t understand the cycle part until now.

“Your grass needs to be cut,” Ezra says out of the blue. “I’ll bring my mower next time and do it for you.”

“Can I pay you?”

He shakes his head. “No. Just make me dinner or something.”

“Fair enough,” I reply, thinking how everything is so easy with him. “Also, I think I do need to put up some ‘no trespassing’ signs. Remember that clearing I was telling you about, with the tree and the cross?” I look over, and he nods. “Well, the cross has been put back for the second time. I’m sure it’s just some kids trying to freak me out. It’s just a little homemade cross, nothing serious.”

“It’s strange, though,” he says, his cup in midair. “In all my years coming here, I’ve never noticed any sign of trespassers. And I thought kids were scared to step foot on this island. Rumor has it that it’s haunted and if you come here you’ll disappear.”

“Seriously?” He gives me an affirmative nod. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing as haunted islands, or houses or cottages or anything.”

“Ahhh.” He draws the sound out. “So you’re a skeptic, then?”

I lean away from him. “Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts.”

“I like the idea that people can contact us from the beyond. It’s comforting, in a way. What’s the harm in believing?”

I think about telling him my suspicion that May is visiting me from time to time, but something stops me. It’s too private, and if she is, I don’t want anyone else to know about it.

“I saw Leslie Swann the other day, and she said the island was haunted,” I choose to divulge instead.

He scrunches his face up with disdain. “Leslie Swann? She’s a total crackpot.”

“Ezra, don’t be mean. And how does her believing in ghosts make her a crackpot but you believing in them is fine?”