The water rolled in short and gray and slapped against the seawall.

A man with a metal detector was working the strip of sand in slow lines, finding nothing and carrying on anyway, and I liked him for that.

Leaves drifted off the maples behind me, red and brown, and sailed a long way out over the water before they went under.

I sat on the bench with the brass plaque bearing my father’s name.

He paid for that bench in 1994 and never told anybody.