Page 45 of Ebbing Tides

“Because this time,” she said, “I'm the one passing through.”

“Ah.”

“I'm going home on Sunday.”

I nodded. “Charlie told me.”

“My kids have school.”

“I'm sure they do.”

“And I have to work,” she continued, her chest heaving with a sigh that brought my own bones to ache. “I have my parents to worry about and a house to take care of.”

“We have our own lives,” I agreed, every word piercing my heart.

“So, what are we supposed to do then?”

She was looking to me for answers, and although I might not have the right one, if there was such a thing, I did have the conclusion I'd come to with Sid's help this morning as I watched the sunrise through my father’s kitchen window. Wishing Iwere watching my lighthouse blinking its reassurance on a blue-streaked backdrop instead.

I sucked in a deep breath. Then, with every ounce of bravery I'd needed to embark on every tour of duty I served, I reached across the space dividing us and took one of her hands between both of mine.

“Let me ask you a question.”

She nodded, her hand limp but still within mine. “Okay.”

“What do you think the chances are that you and I would come together under strange, serendipitous circumstances not once, but twice?”

She blew out a trepidatious breath and shook her head. “I-I don't know.”

“Well, if you asked me that same question, I'd say the chances were very unlikely. Slim to none. Yet here we are.”

She swallowed and slowly licked her lips, her eyes on my hands covering hers. “Here we are.”

I watched as my thumb ran gently over the smooth ridges of her knuckles. “And I say we forget the fact that you're leaving and enjoy the next few days as if you aren't.”

Shocked, she lifted her eyes to stare into mine. “But why would you want to do that? Would you have married your wife, knowing that she would die long before you?”

“In a heartbeat,” I replied honestly, my hands never slipping from hers.

She huffed a laugh, barren of all humor, then turned to stare off beyond me once again. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Me too.”

“We all die in the end,” I told her, stroking her knuckles with my thumb. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find some light to hold on to before it inevitably happens.”

Lines formed between her eyebrows as she delved deep in thought. I took the moment to turn back toward the house, looking for any sign of being watched and finding none. That struck me as questionable now, and I couldn't help but wonder if Charlie really did know something he wasn't letting on.

“Okay.”

I turned abruptly back to Melanie, my heart pounding. “What?”

She filled her lungs with the cold winter air, then nodded. “I said okay. Until Sunday, let's pretend I'm not leaving.”

With that one sentence, my soul lifted as a devastatingly false sense of hope filled the cracks in my fractured heart.

“Okay,” I replied as a grin tugged at the corners of my mouth.

Then Melanie stood and grasped my hand for the first time, tugging me to my feet. I tipped my head in question, and she nudged her head toward the door.

“Well, since we are now officially, temporarily dating, I am cordially inviting you to the dinner I was in the middle of making when you showed up, unannounced,” she said with a teasing smile, her eyes now trained on my truck. “I would also like to invite your dog. He's been looking very lonely, and it's breaking my heart.”