After all, this was Tracy.
We were not rich people.
Neal ran a small business called Overton Marine Survey with his younger brother, and he drove a twelve-year-old pickup truck and wore the same canvas jacket every winter.
“Business is steady,” he used to say.
“We’re comfortable, Hil.”
I never asked for more than that.
For our twentieth anniversary, I saved for fourteen months out of my librarian’s salary and bought him a pre-owned Rolex Datejust, steel, with a worn blue face.
It cost seven thousand nine hundred dollars.
I had it engraved on the back.
FAIR WINDS, N. — H.
He cried when he opened it.
He wore it every day for three years.
He was wearing it on the afternoon of the fourteenth of August, when he knelt on a dock at the Sandusky marina to look at a hull, and put his hand to his chest, and quietly folded down onto the boards.
