My name is Harold, and back in 1970, the four of us, Tommy, Ray, Nick, and I, spent every single summer afternoon at the small lake just outside town, the kind of friendship you assume, at seventeen, will simply last forever without any effort.

Claire offered to stay while I called.

I told her I needed to do it alone, and she understood without any explanation, the way Tommy's daughter would.

She walked up the gravel path toward the road and waited there, out of sight, while I sat on the bench with the journal in my lap and Nick's number on the card in my hand.

I dialed slowly.

My thumb was not reliable.

It rang four times.

I was preparing myself for voicemail when someone answered — a woman, warm-voiced, slightly accented.

"Hello?"

"This is Harold," I said.

"I'm looking for Nick.

I'm an old friend."

A brief silence.

Then: "Harold." Her voice changed entirely.

"One moment.

Please — one moment."

I heard movement.

Soft footsteps.

A door.

Then a voice I had not heard in fifty-five years, thin now and slower, but with the same particular rhythm I had known at seventeen.

"Harold."

"Nick," I said.

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

"You came," he said.

"I came."

"I told Elena you would." A breath.

"She didn't believe me.

She thought fifty-five years was too long."

"It nearly was," I said.

He made a sound that was almost a laugh.

"Did you read it?

The journal?"

"I read all of it.

Here, at the bench."

"Good." Another breath, slower.

"I wanted you to read it there.

I wanted you to be able to look at the water while you read it.

Does it still look the same?"

I looked out at the lake.

The evening light was gold now on the far bank.

"Yes," I said.

"Exactly the same."

"I thought it would," he said.

"Some things are stubborn."

"Nick," I said.

"The entry about Tommy.

When he called you about the cancer."

"Yes."

"You said the right thing."

A long pause.

"I wasn't sure," he said quietly.

"You were," I said.

"I know you were."

He didn't answer immediately.

I heard him breathing, careful and deliberate, the way people breathe when they are managing something.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there today," he said.

"I wanted to be.

I had plans, you know.

I had it all arranged in my head — the four of us, the bench, someone taking a photograph.

Elena was going to come with me."

"I know," I said.

"The boxes were Claire's idea, actually.

She called me and Ray and said, if we can't be there, we send ourselves.

She organized everything." He paused.

"She's a good girl.

Tommy did well."

"She's extraordinary," I said.

"She sat with me the whole time."

"Of course she did." I could hear the smile in it.

"She has his stubbornness."

We talked for a long time after that.

The light changed twice over the water while we talked.

Nick told me about Lisbon, about Elena, about his grandchildren.

I told him about my life here, my daughter in the next town, my garden that had gotten away from me, the way the lake looked in winter when the far bank went grey and bare.

He told me about the twelve years the three of them had been back in contact.

The phone calls, the emails, the one time Ray and Tommy had managed to meet in London for three days, before Ray's stroke and before Tommy's diagnosis made travel impossible for both of them.

"We talked about you every time," Nick said.

"Every single call.

Tommy would say, we have to find Harold.

And then we'd try again and hit another wall.

He never stopped."

"I wish I'd known," I said.

"I know.

But Harold — you're here now.

You came.

That's what matters."

The gold had gone from the water.

The lake was settling into its evening grey.