t was past midnight now, and in her room, Adrienne held the conch as she sat on the bed. Dan had called an hour earlier, full of news about Amanda.

“She told me she was going to take the boys out tomorrow, just the three of them. That they needed to spend some time with their mom.” He paused. “I don’t know what you said, but I guess whatever it was worked.”

“I’m glad.”

“So what did you say to her?’ She was, you know, kind of circumspect about it.”

“The same thing I’ve been saying all along. The same thing you and Matt have been saying.”

“Then why did she listen to you this time?”

“I guess,” Adrienne said, drawing out the words, “because she finally wanted to.”

Later, after she’d hung up the phone, Adrienne read the letters from Paul, just as she’d known she would. Though

his words were hard to see through her tears, her own words were even harder to read. She’d read those countless times, too, the ones she had written to Paul in the year they’d been apart. Her own letters had been in the second stack, the stack that Mark Flanner had brought with him when he’d come to her house two months after Paul had been buried in Ecuador,

Amanda had forgotten to ask about Mark’s visit before she’d gone, and Adrienne hadn’t reminded her. In time, Amanda might bring it up again, but even now, Adrienne wasn’t sure how much she would say. This was the one part of the story she’d kept entirely to herself over the years, locked away, like the letters. Even her father didn’t know what Paul had done.

In the pale glow of the streetlight shining through her window, Adrienne rose from the bed and took a jacket and scarf from the closet, then walked downstairs. She unlocked the back door and stepped outside.

Stars were blazing like tiny sparkles on a magician’s cape, and the air was moist and cold. In the yard, she could see blackened pools, reflecting the ebony above. Lights shone from neighbors’ windows, and though she knew it was just her imagination, she could almost smell salt in the air, as if sea mist were rolling over the neighborhood yards. Mark had come to the house on a February morning; his arm was still in a sling, but she’d barely noticed it. Instead, she found herself staring at him, unable to turn away. He looked, she thought, exactly like his father. When he offered the saddest of smiles as she opened the door, Adrienne took a small step backward, trying hard to hold back the tears.

They sat at the table, two coffee cups between them, and Mark removed the letters from the bag he’d brought with him.

“He saved them,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do with them, except to bring them to you.”

Adrienne nodded as she took them.

“Thank you for your letter,” she said. “I know how hard it must have been for you to write it.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and for a long time, he was silent. Then, of course, he told her why he’d come.

Now, on the porch, Adrienne smiled as she thought about what Paul had done for her. She remembered going to visit her father in the nursing home after Mark had left, the place her father would never have to leave. As Mark had explained as he’d sat at the table, Paul had already made arrangements for her father to be taken care of there until the end of his days—a gift he had hoped to surprise her with. When she began to protest, Mark made it clear that it would have broken his heart to know that she wouldn’t accept it.

“Please,” he finally said, “it’s what my dad wanted.”

In the years that followed, she would cherish Paul’s final gesture, just as she cherished every memory of the few days they spent together. Paul still meant everything to her, would always mean everything to her, and in the chilly air of a late winter evening, Adrienne knew she would always feel that way.

She’d already lived through more years than she had

remaining, but it hadn’t seemed that long. Entire years had slipped from her memory, washed away like sandy footprints near the water’s edge. With the exception of the time she’d spent with Paul Flanner, she sometimes believed that she had passed through life with no more awareness than that of a small child on a tong car ride, staring out the window as the scenery rolled past.

She had fallen in love with a stranger in the course of a weekend, and she would never fall in love again. The desire to love again had ended on a mountain pass in Ecuador. Paul had died for his son, and in that moment, part of her had died as well.

She wasn’t bitter, though. In the same situation, she knew she would have tried to save her own child as well. Yes, Paul was gone, but he had left her with so much. She’d found love and joy, she’d found a strength she never knew she had, and nothing could ever take those things away.

But all of it was over now, all except the memories, and she’d constructed those with infinite care. They were as real to her as the scene she was staring at now, and blinking back the tears that had started falling in the empty darkness of her bedroom, she raised her chin. Staring into the sky, she breathed deeply, listening to the distant and imagined echo of waves as they broke along the shore on a stormy night in Rodanthe.