Chapter 24: The Other Side of the Glass

On a Tuesday in December I stood on the cliffs at the western edge of Portugal with my coat open.

Below me the Atlantic hit the rocks and threw white water up the face of the stone.

It was loud, and it was cold, and it went on forever.

"I always wanted to see the ocean," I said.

Ezra stood beside me with his collar turned up.

"That line was in the file," he said quietly. "Wyatt wrote it for your funeral."

"He wrote it for his speech."

I turned my face into the wind.

"He was right about one thing. I did want to."

"Do you mind that he knew?"

"A little." I leaned into his arm. "But he doesn't get to keep it. It's mine, and I'm standing in it."

My scar was two months old, a thin pink line that did not hurt.

Under it my heart kept a calm, steady beat.

Behind us, on a stone bench, my neighbor sat in her good coat with a thermos of tea.

She had announced at the airport that she'd never left Ohio and did not plan to die there.

"That's a lot of water," she called. "I'll say that for it."

"It's the ocean, ma'am."

"I know what it is."

We laughed, the three of us, into the wind, until she said her knees were cold and took the tea back to the car.

That night Ezra and I had the small hotel room with the window over the river, and a bottle of wine neither of us finished.

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