Nick looked at me.
“Fifty-five years,” he said.
“We kept the promise.”
I looked at the empty chairs around us.
“Not exactly.”
Nick shook his head.
“They sent their children, Harold. I’d say that counts.”
I cannot recover the years my father took from us.
I cannot sit beside that lake with Tommy or hear Ray complain about getting old. But I know now that they remembered me.
They missed me.
They wanted me.
And somewhere in Australia and Germany, children grew up hearing stories about a fourth boy beside a lake.
A boy their fathers never stopped calling their friend.
Before I left Portugal, Nick handed me the pocketknife.
“Take it back,” he said.
“Where?”
He looked at me as if the answer were obvious.
“The bench.”
So yesterday morning, I returned to the lake alone.
I sat where four boys once sat and placed Nick’s knife against the faded initials we’d carved in 1970.
I didn’t cut new ones.
I only traced the old marks.
“H. T. R. N.”
They were still there.
So were we.
Enjoyed the read? Here is another story you will love: I was confused when my MIL put 51 candles on my husband’s cake instead of 50, but she insisted she wasn’t mistaken. What was supposed to celebrate a huge milestone soon became a hunt for the truth, exposing a family secret that had been buried for half a century.
