didn't work out of necessity.
"What could go wrong for us?" he asked,
shaking his head. He wasn't looking at me so much as
he was at his memories now. "If we got sick, we
received the best medical attention; if we broke
something, it was replaced, no matter the cost. Our
entire futures seemed to be laid out on a primrose
path. All of us knew how lucky we were and we had
only a vague interest in those who weren't. Maybe that
was because, deep inside, the smartest of us knew life
can be a bubble that bursts at any moment and
everything you thought was so important can vanish
in an instant."
He sighed deeply, his shoulders rising and then falling as he lowered his head.
"She arrived early that afternoon. Surprise! My
mother wasn't going along this time. It was to be just
her and dad."
He raised his head.
"She described every little detail about that day
to me afterward, alternating between crying and
laughing, her laughter thin and on the verge of
insanity. "Dad looked dapper, handsome, younger
than ever.
She noticed he was more talkative than usual
when she arrived, but his talk was about new things
my mother had bought at auctions, plans he had to
redo this and redo that around the house, small talk.
Until they got out to sea, that is.
He sailed into a cove and started to talk about
his own youth. Pretty soon he was talking about