12:00 A.M.

TOBIAS STOPS. NEITHER ONE OF US has said anything for a minute, and now here it is, upon us.

“Well,” he says. We haven’t yet made it home, but there’s one thing I have left to ask. It’s the question I’ve been waiting to ask him all night, since we first arrived at this dinner nearly four hours ago. It’s the only one left. But of course I know, don’t I? Even so, I need to hear him say it.

“Why were you there that day?”

He exhales and nods, like he knew it was coming, of course he did. “I was going to re-propose,” he says. “Set a date. Call our parents. Have a big wedding.” He smiles and lets out a small laugh. “I wanted the right ring.”

I think about the fight we had that day in the store. The way his pride was damaged. “It’s a beautiful ring,” I say.

His features are lit up in the moonlight, and I see him as that nineteen-year-old kid on the beach in Santa Monica. Beautiful and stubborn with everything ahead of him. “It wasn’t the right one, though,” he says. “I was still getting it wrong. The one we picked out together? That was ours.”

“Yes,” I say.

“You were the great love of my life,” he says. “That’s just how it happened. But I won’t be yours.” He isn’t sad, not even a little bit. “I don’t want to be.”

“Tobias,” I say. I feel my eyes sting up again.

“Not forever. Okay?”

I nod. “Okay.”

“Here,” he says. “I want you to have this.” He hands me the pocket watch, the one that was my father’s, that I gave him.

“It was a gift,” I say.

“Still is,” he tells me. “Like Robert said—I can’t take it with me.”

Tobias wraps his arms around me. I drop my face into his neck, but then I open my eyes, because I don’t want to miss seeing him, not a moment of him.

“I didn’t tell you,” he says. “I remember now.”

I look up at him. “What?”

He pauses, like he’s taking me in. His eyes drift over my face like it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. Like we have all the time in the world in which to gaze.

“You were wearing a red tank top and denim shorts. Your hair was down and you kept swinging your arms by your sides. I thought you were going to knock someone over.”

I think about the two of us, standing in the sand, no idea how entwined our lives were already—and would be.

“That’s how I see you,” he says. He gives me a little salute, and then he’s gone.

Just like that. He doesn’t so much disappear as he leaves. I imagine he’s off to the corner deli, picking up cigarettes and a bottle of off-brand seltzer.

I walk the rest of the way home alone. I find my keys at the bottom of my bag by an old piece of dried-out gum and a lip gloss. I climb the stairs to my apartment. It’s dark, and I flip on a light. There are remnants of birthday cake on the counter, and I drop my bag down next to them—a slice of frosting, chocolate crumbs. I head into the bedroom.

I take the shoebox out from under my bed and rifle though it—photos of Tobias and me, keys to our old apartment, Broadway Playbills, movie stubs, the wrinkled Post-it, the ring—until I find what I’m looking for. It’s a letter, addressed to me, from Alex Nielson, dated 2006. I open it and read.

Dear Sabrina,

It’s strange to be writing you this, although I suppose stranger for you to be reading it. My name is Alex and I’m your sister. We share a father, Robert Nielson, who gave me your name, and I looked you up. It’s really cool that you’re at USC. I’d love to go there someday, although I’m not sure I’ll get in. I’m only in eighth grade but my grades aren’t very good. I love to write though.

I’m the older of two. I have a younger sister, Daisy. We don’t really get along. Sometimes that makes me wonder if you and I would and other times it makes me convinced I have to know you. I guess that’s why I’m writing.

Dad talks about you. Not a lot, but sometimes. When I ask he always will. He told me that he hasn’t seen you since you were a little girl. He said he doesn’t want to disturb the life you have now and I understand but I also sometimes wish he would. He’s a good dad. It makes me sad to think you don’t know that.

He told me a story about you the other day. Daisy was carrying on about her name. She doesn’t like it. She thinks it’s too girly. She’s all goth right now—total rocker chick. She asked why they gave her that name and my mom (her name is Jeanette) said it was because daisies were the first thing she saw in the hospital room when she had her. Daisy thinks that’s lame. Anyway after dinner I asked about you. I wanted to know why they named you Sabrina. Is that strange? I’ve never even met you before. All I’ve seen are photos of you when you were very small.

He told me he loved Audrey Hepburn. He said she was his favorite actress. On his first date with your mom he took her to see Sabrina. It was playing at a black-and-white theater and they got popcorn and milk duds—this is all him, btw. He told me the details. Sabrina was his favorite of Audrey’s movies. He thought it meant something that the heroine isn’t a shrinking violet—that she goes in search of a life for herself and returns stronger for it. He told me when he met you he thought that’s the kind of woman you’d be.

I bet he was right.

Love,

Alex

P.S. If you’d ever like to get together let me know. Dad promised to take me to an exhibit in Santa Monica next week. It’s on the beach. Maybe we could meet there.

There are many ways stories can unfold, and now I see this one begin to take shape. Something different in the space where there used to be just the one thing. I put the watch and receipt in the box, proof of the night, of the decade—of what was once and is no longer—but when I go to close it the lid won’t fit. There is something stuck up against the side. I let my fingers thread in between the cardboard until they find the foreign object. I unhook it and hold it in my hands, and that’s when I see it’s the photograph. Not Tobias’s, not the one I lost, but the one we stood in front of on the beach that first day. The little boy and the eagle. It’s a print no bigger than a postcard.

I never bought it, I’m sure of that. But here it is in the effects box. The little boy stands with wings spread out behind him, his eyes closed. He appears just as he was that day ten years ago—to be soaring.

I take out a pen. I flip the photo over. I think about what comes after—how much there is to say. Twenty-four years. Birthdays. Cross-country moves. Jobs and life. Begin, I think. Begin begin begin.

Dear Alex, I write. And for the first time in a long time I know exactly what it is I want to say.