There were plenty of ordinary explanations.
But none explained the ring mark.
The Gull’s Nest had a telephone number listed online.
I found it.
Then, before I could change my mind, I called.
A woman answered after several rings.
“Gull’s Nest. Carol speaking.”
“Hello, Carol. I’m wondering whether you could help me. My husband visited your café Saturday morning with a few friends. He thinks he might have left something behind.”
“Of course, honey. What did he lose?”
I panicked.
I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“His sunglasses.”
“Okay. What’s his name?”
“Mark Ellison.”
Silence.
Not the ordinary kind of silence you hear when someone checks a lost-and-found box.
A long, uneasy silence.
Then the woman spoke again.
“Are you Mark’s wife?”
Something cold moved through my chest.
“Yes.”
Another pause.
And then, in a voice filled with sudden sympathy, she whispered,
**“Oh, honey.”**
I ended the call.
I didn’t say goodbye.
I simply pressed the button and dropped my phone onto the kitchen table.
It slid off the edge and landed on the floor.
I sat motionless.
Why would a woman at a lakeside café recognize my husband’s name?
Why would she immediately ask whether I was his wife?
And why had she sounded so terribly sorry for me?
I knew that tone.
It was the voice people used when they knew something painful but couldn’t bring themselves to say it.
I rested my forehead against my hands.
For twenty-six years, I’d believed I knew my husband.
Now I wasn’t certain of anything.
