"And Tori?" I asked.
Patrice paused. I could hear the clink of an ice cube in her glass.
"She called this morning," Patrice said softly. "She didn't shout. She asked if Chloe was still having the nightmares about the swimming test. I told her Chloe was fine, that we had read three chapters of *The Secret Garden* before bed."
"Did she sound better?"
"She sounded like my daughter," Patrice said. "Which is something I haven't heard in about ten years. When do you get back to Newark?"
"Thursday afternoon," I said. "Joyce wants to buy salt cod at the airport."
"Don't let her," Patrice said firmly. "It will make your luggage smell like an abandoned dock. Come straight to my house when you land. We will have cold chicken and potato salad on the patio."
"I’d like that, Patrice," I said.
And I realized, with a small start of surprise, that I actually meant it.
***
Chapter 8 - The Cliffs of the Algarve
In Lagos, the world was made of three things: ochre stone, white foam, and an ocean so vast and blue it made everything that had happened in Ohio seem like an argument between ants on a sidewalk.
Joyce and I took a small wooden boat out to the Ponta da Piedade on Tuesday morning.
The boat was piloted by an old man named Manuel, whose skin had been cured by fifty years of salt and sun until it resembled an old leather boot. He took us through sea arches that looked like the flying buttresses of submerged cathedrals, the green water so clear we could see the brown kelp swaying six fathoms below us like trees in an underwater wind.
"Look at that, Myrna," Joyce said, pointing her camera toward a natural chimney where the waves roared into a dark cavern and burst out the top in a cloud of diamond-colored spray. "You would have missed this."
"I would have," I said.
I would have been sitting at the kitchen island, checking the red folder to see if Maggie was allowed to have oat milk instead of whole milk, while the clock ticked its little brass tongue into the cogs.
Manuel cut the engine in a quiet cove protected by three towering sea stacks of golden limestone. The boat rocked gently in the swell, the water making a low, hollow *chug-chug* against the wooden hull.
I reached into my bag and pulled out four smooth, flat pebbles I had picked up from the beach at Praia da Rocha that morning.
One was pink granite, speckled with quartz. That was for Chloe. One was dark gray, with a white band running through its center like a racing stripe. That was for Finn. One was a deep, rough sea-green, heavy for its size. That was for Eli.
And the last was a tiny, perfect white shell, no bigger than a thumbnail, shaped like a fan, with edges so delicate you could see the sun through them. That was for Maggie.
Five years ago, when Charles died, I thought my life had become an estate that was being settled.
I thought that after seventy, the only work left was to be careful, to be available, to make sure that the things Charles had built didn't fall down, and to help Caleb keep his own life from wobbling. I had thought that love was an endless willingness to be inconvenienced.
Manuel reached out with a gnarled hand, took a small wooden box from beneath his seat, and handed Joyce and me two small glasses of medronho—a clear, fiery fruit brandy made from wild strawberry trees in the hills behind the coast.
"To the sea," Manuel said in broken English, lifting his glass.
"To the sea," Joyce echoed, downing hers in one go and immediately coughing until her face turned the color of Pena Palace.
I lifted mine to my lips. It smelled of smoke, honey, and wild berries. It burned all the way down, hot and sweet and fierce, settling in the pit of my stomach like an ember.
"To being dangerous," I whispered.
Manuel smiled, showing three gold teeth. He didn't understand the words, but he understood the look in an old woman's eyes when she realizes that the water beneath the boat is deep enough to carry her anywhere she wants to go.
***
Chapter 9 - The Reckoning on the Patio
The reunion did not take place at my house. It took place on Patrice’s brick patio on Friday afternoon, under the shade of an old wisteria arbor whose purple blooms were just beginning to drop their petals onto the slate paving.
Tori and Caleb had landed at Columbus at noon. They had driven straight to Oak Crest Lane, their luggage still in the trunk of their rental car.
Joyce had dropped me off at the end of the driveway forty minutes earlier.
My suitcase was sitting in Patrice’s front hall, beside her umbrella stand, with the yellow ribbon slightly frayed from its travels through four airports. I was wearing my blue linen tunic, my skin five shades browner than it had been ten days ago, my hair smelling faintly of Portuguese lavender soap.
We were all sitting around Patrice’s wrought-iron table.
There was a plate of cold sliced roast chicken, a bowl of German potato salad with whole-grain mustard, and a pitcher of iced tea with sprigs of fresh mint floating among the lemon wheels.
The children were in the yard.
Eli was showing Finn how to throw a horseshoe, their shouts of triumph ringing out every time an iron shoe hit the stake with a dull *clink*. Chloe was sitting on the grass with Patrice’s whippet, her fingers buried in the dog’s gray fur, while Maggie ran in circles through the sprinkler, her pink swimsuit flashing in the afternoon light.
Tori sat across from me.
She looked smaller. She had lost the sharp, brittle gloss that usually coated her like shellac. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and she was wearing a gray cotton sweatshirt that Caleb had bought her at the airport in Anchorage. Her hands were wrapped around her glass of tea, her thumbs tracing the fluted glass over and over.
Caleb sat beside her, his shoulders square, his eyes clear. He didn't look like the boy hiding behind the compost bin anymore. He looked like a man who had spent fourteen days looking at the ocean and had finally understood how wide it was.