He’d acknowledged that his decision was imperfect.
And somehow, that made him feel more real to me.
I folded
the letter carefully.
Then I looked toward the ocean.
“I wish you were here, Robert,” I whispered.
The waves rolled gently onto the shore.
For the first time, I allowed myself to miss him without needing to remember him as flawless.
When I returned to the hotel, Susan was waiting outside my room.
She held the photograph we’d taken on the beach the previous afternoon.
The one she’d called our final picture.
“I printed it,” she said.
I looked at it.
Two women sitting beneath a beach umbrella.
Both smiling.
Neither knowing exactly what the next day would bring.
Susan handed it to me.
“I thought you might want to keep it.”
I studied the photograph.
Then I looked at her.
“You were wrong, you know.”
She frowned.
