We said goodbye on that cliff, where the sea leaves a bruise of salt.

The wind over the lighthouse sighed, blew my hair around us like a shroud. The lighthouse watched like a priest when you kissed my cheek.

“I’ll be back,” you said in my ear. You said something else, but the wind was too loud for me to hear you.

Winter came and passed. The ice crusted on the bay broke off in jagged pieces. A single thread of ivy crawled up the side of the lighthouse, resting between the bricks. The swallows nested for a while in the lamp’s eaves. I planted strawberries. Pumpkins, when those were done fruiting. The thread of ivy withered and the swallows’ nests went quiet.

You sent letters sometimes. I couldn’t make myself read them. I kept them all in the bottom of my trunk, the one I always kept packed. After the second winter your letters stopped coming.

The postboy didn’t. Maybe he felt sorry for me. I wondered if he knew why you stopped writing, but I never asked. He came by even when there was a blizzard, that fourth winter, and I thought the lighthouse might crumble under the wind. In the spring he helped re-shingle the roof. In summer he fixed the bricks that had been worn loose by the wind. In the fall he climbed the rickety ladder and tried to cut loose the beard of old ivy on the lighthouse. One of the rungs broke in half when he put his weight on it. It was the first time I’d cried since you left, when he lay still at the bottom of the ladder. I thought he had died.

A broken leg, that’s all. He stayed in our spare room while it healed. And then he stayed longer. I didn’t mind.

“Don’t you suppose we ought to get married,” he said over breakfast that next spring.

“I suppose so,” I said, and buttered another piece of toast. But we didn’t, not then.

He planted tulips and hydrangeas around our walkway. Rose bushes up against the house. Daffodils and peonies and lily of the valley. But he left the forget-me-nots where you’d planted them by the cliff. I’m not sure when they stopped blooming. It may have been the same year the scraggly grey cat had her kittens under the porch. She was a terrible mouser, but she kept our feet warm in the winter months. When she died I buried her under the apple tree and he rolled a big stone over for her grave.

“Shall we get married, then,” he said the next fall when we were sitting in our chairs by the fire. I was darning our socks. His all had holes in the toe, and mine in the heel.

“I suppose so,” I said, and sewed another stitch. But we didn’t — not then.

Sometimes he’d come find me when I’d be sitting on the edge of the cliff, watching the sea. He’d watch with me, and hold my hand if I let him. I often did. We’d watch the horizon until the sunset glared in our eyes.

I wonder whether he was waiting for you, too. Perhaps he was waiting for me.

A family of squirrels nested in the apple tree one year. The tree had started to go knobby after a while, and a hollow split the middle. As if the tree was missing his heart, I thought.

That was the summer he and I ran down to the beach and I thought my laughter might drown out the sun.

“Let’s get married,” I said, blinking in time with the first stars of the evening. He looked at me and I could hear the heartbeat of the earth. The sand was stuck to our cheeks, but we didn’t particularly mind.

It wasn’t much of a wedding. I wasn’t much of a wife, after all. I wore my mother’s dress, and he borrowed his brother’s tie. Neither of us knew where to find a minister, so we agreed the lighthouse would have to do. We kissed under the apple tree and made rings out of dry grass. I suppose the flowers were the bridesmaids.

He started to get sick that winter. I don’t think I noticed until spring came and he was still coughing. By September he couldn’t climb the lighthouse with me any longer. By February he couldn’t get out of bed without help.

“Take me to the cliff,” he said. “I want to watch the sea again.” It was August, and the wind roared as I carried him up the hill. I remember he shivered in my arms like a child. But when he looked at the sun cracking over the sea, he smiled the way I remembered, and for just a moment I could pretend he wasn’t a ghost.

He died that November. I buried him on the cliff. It took me half a day in the rain to dig the grave, and the other half to roll the boulder from under the dead apple tree up to the top of the hill. I don’t remember if I cried.

I suppose the years just blurred together, after that. The tulips bloomed for a few years, and the roses a few years more, but by now they’re all dead. The swallows come back to their old nests year by year. I don’t watch from the cliff anymore, though sometimes I sit there and talk to him. If I sigh, the wind hides it well enough.

Last year I opened that trunk again. Some of your letters had been chewed on by mice or spotted with mold, but the rest were only slightly faded with time.

—You met a girl, the last one said. Wedding in the spring. Don’t wait for you any longer. You were happy, and I should be too.

I suppose I was, all told. Here from the old weathered rock, I don’t remember missing you.