having to move too far. For now, he seemed content to have a good wash and settle in for a rest. Replacing the wish in the basket, Elizabeth raised her glass in the air.
“Here’s to us,” she said, looking at Cookie and thinking of Tom. Her eyes flicked to the door; should she look already? The excitement swelled inside her like a great big inflatable balloon. Even though she knew that a reunion was never in the cards, she had always wondered if one day he might just knock on the door and be standing there with the crocus in his hand rather than left on the doorstep. Especially this year, the fiftieth and most important, as she could see it. That would be her wish this year, she thought, just to have him back. But if those wishes were all they had left, it was enough for her to know that he still cared enough to come. And at least this way, she supposed, they had never suffered the difficult years of marriage, the arguing or disappointments that every couple she knew had experienced along the way. Instead they remained forever young, their relationship one of eternal hope.
Setting the empty champagne flute back on the table, she moved toward the door. Her anticipation had gotten the better of her, and she couldn’t wait any longer. The key turned with a clunk in the lock, the handle creaking as she pulled it. A gust of sea breeze picked up the edges of her silk robe as she opened the door, the chill of the air taking her breath away as she looked down to the step. But despite all her hope, expectation, and all the ways that she relied on the arrival of his gift, when she looked down there was no little flower or wish waiting to be found. This year, the step was empty.
Then
The first Elizabeth knew of the accident was when she woke to the dull thudding of her father’s boots on the stairs. The dark sky was broken by the glimmer of moonlight as it fussed at the edge of a break in the clouds. The clock ticked at her side, and she saw that it was a little after 1 a.m. Somewhere in the distance a door slammed, followed by the faintest ringing of a bell. Was that a voice she could hear too, calling out? Pushing the covers aside, she jumped from the bed, moved toward the window. As she peered into the street, she saw her father rushing from their home in the direction of the sea. His shoes were untied, the blue and white stripes of his pajamas flickering underneath the tails of his coat. There had been calls for such urgent departures in the past, but even in the direst of emergencies he always got dressed. Leaving in his nightclothes was unthinkable.
Elizabeth pushed her feet into her slippers and opened her bedroom door. With her father gone, the responsibility for her mother was left to her. Even at the age of seventeen she knew it wasn’t good for her mother to wake alone. Ahead, a thin sliver of light shone from the door of her parents’ bedroom, left ajar in an otherwise tenebrous house.
“Mum,” called Elizabeth as she moved along the landing. They tried to keep her accompanied, since the cruelty of the confusion had set in about a year ago, yet still there were unpredictable moments like this when she ended up alone. Alzheimer’s disease, her father called it. The name didn’t mean much to Elizabeth, but she hated the disease all the same. Only last month they had found her mother trying to take a boat out, with seemingly little idea about where she was and devastatingly unprepared for what might have lain ahead. Her condition was getting steadily worse, just a little bit every day; her presence in their family was like a rock ground down by the constant weight of the tides.
As she pushed open the door to her parents’ bedroom, an empty bed presented itself, the sheets turned in both left and right. Elizabeth thought she heard a noise then, something in the kitchen, perhaps. Her mother must already be downstairs. Turning to leave she almost missed it, but there, sitting alongside the chest of drawers, was her father’s black doctor’s bag. A fresh worry surfaced; he couldn’t work without his bag, and if there was an emergency great enough to rush from the house still