Jon ran in. “You okay, boss?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I better go and make sure everything is—” He cut his sentence short as another tremor rolled through.
“The Cascadia Subduction Zone.” Seb laughed, but still sounded nervous. “They say everything west of I-5 is supposed to break off into the ocean.”
“I’m good,” Nick said with a grin because his shop and home were on the Eastside.
“But I’m screwed.”
“Yeah, you are,” Nick said, and he wasn’t thinking about earthquakes.
One Week Later
Adrienne sat at a waterfront café nursing a cup of hot cocoa while she watched an artist paint the sunset. “We’re in the same sort of field, you know,” she told the old man wielding a paintbrush and wearing a straw hat. “We probably took the same classes in college.”
“I didn’t go to college,” the man told her.
“Oh. Well, you’re very good,” she told him. “I was in graphic design.”
“But now you’re not?” He didn’t look at her, but kept his attention flicking between his canvas and the fading sun. His long beard was spattered with paint.
“I’m an attorney.”
The man chuckled. “I didn’t go to law school either.”
“I wish I hadn’t.”
The man didn’t say anything but lifted his eyebrow.
“Have you ever wanted to change everything about your life?”
“No,” he said. “What do you want to change?”
“I just said: everything.”
“You cannot mean that. There must be people that you love.”
“Of course, but…not everyone I love loves me back.”
“Claro. It’s unreasonable to expect them to.”
“Is it?”
“It’s not only an unrealistic expectation, it’s also unfair.”
Adrienne blew out a sigh. “But if you’ve pledged your life to someone…”
“Ah, but that is different.”
#
Nick stood on the embankment near the Río de la Plata watching the fading sun. He had lost both his parents to the river. The memories, long faded, were nothing more than a dull, gray ache. Of the actual accident itself he had little recollection, and for this he was glad. Everyone had told him his survival had been a miracle. Why had the freak storm that had capsized their boat not taken him as well as his parents?
Familiar laughter cut through Nick’s painful memories. He turned, searching the crowded plaza, then spotted her bright yellow hair. Adrienne sat at a bistro-style table, her chin propped on her cupped hands as she gazed out at the dying sun. The light breeze ruffled the hem of her cherry-strewn sundress. She appeared to be chatting with an elderly man who was painting the sunset. The sound of her voice reeled Nick closer.
“But you still love your husband?” the man asked.
“Of course. Just because he no longer loves me doesn’t mean I can just turn off my feelings.”
