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was setting, and what she saw then seemed like a vision. She couldn't see him clearly, but she saw his form and outline. She knew she was imagining it, maybe even hallucinating, and then she heard his voice. It was Liam. He was standing in front of her, with his back to the sunset, almost like a movie. She just lay there and stared at him and said nothing.

“Hello, Sasha.” She had no idea why he'd come. The last time she had seen him they had both been crying. This time, she just looked at him and smiled. It had been five months since she'd seen him.

“I was watching the sunset.”

“I saw you from the porch.”

“How's Charlotte?” She didn't want to know how Beth was.

“Much better. She just started walking.”

She didn't invite him to sit down. She just nodded. “Why did you come here?”

“I'm going back. I just wanted to come and say good-bye.”

“You already did that.” It was a strange, disjointed conversation between two people who had loved and lost each other. They had already said good-bye once, five months before. What was the point of coming back to do it again? “When are you going back?” It was a meaningless question. When he was going back no longer mattered. He already had, five months before.

“Tomorrow,” he answered, and then finally sat down on the sand beside her. He felt odd standing up and looking at her as she lay there. She seemed smaller than he remembered, and paler, and her hair seemed darker in sharp contrast to the ivory white face. She was more beautiful than he had remembered, and he had thought of her often. She had haunted him, like someone he had killed, and had to live forever after with the floating tormented vision of her face the last time he saw her. “I just wanted to see you once before I went back.”

“I thought we weren't going to do that.” Her eyes met his and held them. He had forgotten how piercing her eyes were, at the same time gentle and intense. She had kept her part of the bargain. She had never called him. And unlike what he was doing now, she had never shown up in Vermont. Coming back to torture her one last time seemed unfair to her, and she was sorry that he'd come. She would have to climb the hill of healing yet again. And the climb had already been hard enough.

“I didn't call you, because I was afraid you wouldn't see me.”

“You were right. I wouldn't. One good-bye was enough.” And they'd had more than that in the course of the year they shared. “Why did you come?” She knew there was another reason that he hadn't told her yet. She knew him better by then than he knew himself. But she could see how much he too had changed in the last five months. There was no boyhood left in his handsome face, only manhood. He had had his own journey of pain after he left. He had had three children and a wife to accompany him daily on his travels. She had had no one but herself, and the trip had been harder on her.

“Do you hate me?” he asked her. She should have. But she was beyond that, and had never gotten there anyway. She shook her head. It wasn't his fault.

“No. I love you. I probably always will.” His eyes went to her hand, and he saw both his bracelets still on her wrist.

“So will I.” The sun was down, and it had gotten cold. “Do you want me to go now?”

She was honest with him. “Not yet.” This might be her last look. She wanted to savor it before he left.

“I have to drive to New York tonight,” he said, for lack of something better to say. None of the things he had wanted to tell her seemed to make sense now. She had become someone else. Bigger, better, stronger, deeper. Trial by fire. It had purified her in some strange way.

“Why New York?”

“Because I'm going back.” He was being cryptic, and he confused her.

“Back where? Vermont?”

He smiled and shook his head. She had misunderstood. “No. London.”

“Why there?”

And then he knew he had to tell her. It was why he'd come. He realized when he saw her that he had already caused her too much pain. And even if she still loved him, the doors were closed. He could see it in her face.

“I