Wheeling Gull Isle When sea foam green is in fashion.

How peacefully she’d entered the island. While she stayed they shared meals, slept on the same bedding, laughed. There was much sweetness, there was little pain.

But when she calls he knows her meaning. The island had a clock, it seemed. A bell tolled. Time's up.

From his place tucked beside Dinah, Judah rises and crosses the salted sweep towards Towhee, stopping short of the rocks. He thought he’d already cried so hard that there’d be nothing left inside him. But somehow the tears begin again, one for each day he’d had her.

And if she vowed to come back… well, his mother had once made that promise, too.

He stands hollow.