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It was like the fog that came in silently and out of nowhere, and socked you in so solid you couldn’t see a single thing, not even your own sails In a fog like that you could only navigate fro, none of the instruments worked You were in waters you knew like the back of your hand, but you couldn’t tell where you were You could strike a rock that you’d avoided a million times before; that you knew like an old friend Or you could head in co direction and never find your way back

He didn’t finishthe coffee He found a piece of paper and a pen and he sat right down at the kitchen table and he wrote E in his head for days now He wrote it quickly, before the fog came back and stopped him The words weren’t exactly as eloquent as he wanted theain, he’d always told Emily that he was no poet

I love you, he wrote You’re , Emily, and every day in between

And really, that was everything he meant anyway That summed it all up

He folded the letter carefully and wrote Emily on the outside of it The letter safe in his hand, he went out the kitchen door to the yard, where the dogs greeted hiues

It was the grey light before dawn Tybalt and Rocco followed him as he walked around the house that he had built for Emily and himself He checked the s, the porch steps, the doors, the shingles; he peered up at the roof with its three gables, and the chi ahead, for this day

There was nothing left to be done here It was all sound; she should be fine for the winter, when it came And after that, Adam would help her Maybe William would come back and help her, too

A wild rose bush grew against the cedar shingles on the side of the house Last month the bush had been ablaze with blossoms; now there were only a few left to face the end of su the thorns, he picked a rose off the bush It was bright pink, with a yellow centre The petals were tender and perfect

He whistled for the dogs and they came into the house with him He tipped some food into their dishes and refreshed their water bowls He stroked their heads and scratched behind their ears

Then he went upstairs to their bedroo the letter and the rose

She was still asleep She hadn’t azed down at her Her hair had threads of silver and sunshine, her skin was soft in sleep She was the girl he’d irl he felt like he’d waited his whole life up till then to ain They were the same colour that the sea had been the first time he’d ever seen it, back in 1952, a shade of blue that up till then he had never even been able to iine

But if he woke her up to see her eyes for the last time it wouldn’t be the last tio

And if he put this off and put this off, one day the fog would surround him It came in stealthily, but all at once One minute you could see clear – and the next moment you were blind And more than blind: you couldn’t even remember what it was like to see

He placed the letter on her bedside table, next to the glass of water she kept there It would be the first thing she sahen she woke up He put the wild rose on top of it Then he bent and kissed her, gently, on her cheek He breathed in a lungful of her scent

‘I’d never have forgotten you,’ he whispered to her, more quietly than the sound of the ocean outside

HeHe’d thought it would be hard but there had been a harder ti away frooodbye