She begged him so he took her back to the seashore, two hundred miles away. Back to her hometown where she had lived until she went away to school. Where her parents had lived for thirty years beyond that until their deaths.

“Well this will be fun!” she said. She wore someone else's navy slacks and his grey cardigan sweater. Her head was wrapped in a vibrant colored scarf twisted in a turban that she believed looked exotic and quite attractive. Her reading group ladies had told her that. He preferred to see her bald. It was more honest.

“Is the suitcase ready to go?” he asked.

“Oh yes, it's perfect,” Tina said.

He'd had to pack her things as well as his. They were only staying overnight at a cousin's house in the village but there was so much extra that she needed even as she shrank in size. Extra socks and extra panties and three tops she wore at once in layered style. She was always cold now. And there were the drugs and supplements and paraphernalia that came with cancer.

Dan packed the car and went through the house locking doors and windows. She sat at the kitchen table resting.

“You're sure you're up to this?” he asked and she nodded, smiling. He didn't think she was but could not refuse that excitement in her eye he hadn't seen for quite a while. He thought that it was too long a drive. She said they could make several stops, maybe once an hour.

On the drive he worried and looked over at her often. She was alert and looking out the windshield, then the side window if something caught her attention.The trees had just started flowering in delicate new branches dotted in bursting buds. The sun reached in the windows with a warm caress. No one had thought she'd live till Spring.

“Oh look,” she said, pointing out the passenger window, “How lovely!”

“It's nice,” he said, meaning the fact that the ride was making her happy. He felt a tightness in his shoulders melt. Tension he hadn't realized was there. He turned the radio on but kept it low. Always listening. Always ready. White fencing flashed by in rhythm. In the distant field, horses played.

“Dan, I want you to date,” she said.

His stomach rolled.

“Don't even talk like that,” he said. Mumbled, terrified to test his voice aloud.

“Really,” she said, “I want you to be happy and I don't want you to be alone. It's all right. Really.” She touched his arm, left her fingertips lightly on his sleeve. He took his hand off the wheel and slid it down to grasp hers. He squeezed it gently, sick again at its frailty of bones held together by a thin skin glove. He released it and reset his hand on the wheel, painfully aware of hers lying like a drying autumn leaf beside him.

“It's better we be open about it,” Tina said. “I've already told the children that you have my blessing to get married again. I didn't want them giving you any trouble.”

He searched for words through the letters of hot branding irons in his head. “There's no one who can take your place,” he said. “No one I want.”

They rode awhile in silence but his insides were tumbling around. He pictured clothes spinning in a dryer. Last week she had insisted he learn how to do the laundry. She showed him, but then she wouldn't let him take over yet. “Not yet,” she'd said and he hated that he had felt relieved.

He made her lay down and take a nap before dinner, despite her insistence that she felt just fine.

“She tires easily,” he told her cousin Violet. He sat in the kitchen while Violet prepared dinner. He understood why Tina loved it here. The house was warm with a small fire in the hearth. A heavy kettle, black and bulbous hung over the wood fire. From it came the aroma of herbs and salt.

Violet caught him sniffing the warm aroma and laughed. “Oh, that's from the ocean,” she said. “And I've yet to take down autumn's dill and basil from the rafters.” She pointed overhead. It was homey here. As if the very air breathed welcome .

Yet he had a hard time sleeping in the unfamiliar bed and cautiously snuggled up against his wife. When he awoke to sun beams streaking on the pastel quilt he was surprised to see that Tina had gotten herself up and left.

They stopped mid-laugh and looked up as he came into the kitchen. Violet pointed to the coffeepot on the stove. “I just made it,” she said. He poured a cup.

“How are you feeling?” he asked his wife. Tina smiled up at him. He caught his breath. If he didn't know, he would have sworn she wasn't ill. The truth came back and hit him with a double hammer for that one small instant of disbelief he'd allowed himself to have.

They lunched at a casual restaurant on the beach. He left the women to talk of things he thought they'd need to say. He walked along the shore, the ocean creeping up and pulling back in a quiet cycle of the tide. He stopped in several fishing shops, losing himself to brightly feathered lures and bamboo rods. He was almost able to forget.

Dan headed back, staring in the distance for a while at two people sitting on the rocky arm that reached out into the ocean. It looked like her, the brightly colored scarf a giveaway, but the other wasn't Violet. It appeared to be a man. He walked faster, slowing only when he stepped his way over the sharp-edged rocks.

“Tina? You shouldn't be out in the cold,” he said. Her face glowed with the sunlit coral of a peach. He looked at the man.

“Dan, this is Anthony. He's an old friend from the past,” she said. The two men nodded at each other. Anthony was smiling and reached out a hand. “You're a lucky man,” he said. “Tina's told me all about your family too.”

She wasn't tired as he'd expected her to be on the long ride back home. She wasn't chilled or weak. He thought she looked more serene. He didn't ask her what plans she'd told to Violet, nor question her about the odd coincidence of running into the man, her friend from somewhere in the past where Dan did not belong. She looked happy and that was for now enough. They drove in silence while the sun fell into the horizon. They were almost home.

“You must promise me that if someone comes along who's special, that you will get married,” she said.

He turned to say something and stopped. Her eyes sparkled with a life of forty years' ago.

“I will,” he said, unsure of everything.