He had a beautiful back, a swimmer’s back, all broad shoulders and gold skin. And he was smiling, always smiling, and it was a smile that was in his eyes, too. Being in love with him was easy. It felt natural, good, safe.

He was gone before she knew it, and in the years that followed, there were times when she became almost convinced that he’d been a fantasy, willed into life by her own loneliness and yearning for what she’d never really believed could be hers. She had known as soon as she’d met him that this would be her first and last brush with happiness, and, as her body aged and the edges of her memory softened, she remained suspended between the desire to forget and the despair at not being able to remember. It was only the memory of his back, how real and tangible and there it had been beneath her fingertips, that convinced her that he’d been there at all, that she’d been his, and that, for just a moment, she’d really been that happy.