I was looking at the water faucet on the top of the pipe when he sat down on the bale of hay next to me. It stuck up out of the ground like a miniature periscope. It didn't belong here in the woods among the ferns.

          "I knew somehow that you'd be here. I talked to your kids. Told them I'd find you and make sure you're OK. What are you going to do?"

          "I don't know."

          "Well, what are you doing now?"

          I considered. I looked at the rustic A-frame with no front and the massive stone fireplace that made up the back wall. I looked at the bricks laid down for a floor and the uneven surface they made. I wasn't doing anything. I was just safe here like time was standing still. There was nothing here that I had to do. No demands. No expectations. There was security here with the Douglas fir trees overhead, the moss caressing the north sides of their imposing trunks. The electrical outlet on the inside wall of the A-frame didn't belong, either. It's incongruity tweaked my brain.

          "I'm waiting."

          "What are you waiting for?"

          I shut my eyes to close out all those visual images. I could still feel the cold breeze against my face. The woods smelled like autumn: dry and decaying; pulling in on itself in preparation for winter. I could hear the water in the pond below the hill and the plaintive calls of a flock of swans somewhere in the distance.

          "I don't know . . . maybe I came here to die with the woods." I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel anything. All the unfinished business of my life no longer held any meaning for me. Nothing mattered except the water pipe and the electrical outlet. I could see them behind my closed eyes. When all else died, they would still be here because they didn't belong in the first place. Nature had no hold on them.

          I felt him stir beside me and colder air filled the space that had been captured by the warmth from his body. I shivered. I opened my eyes as he rose and stood before me, softly gripping my shoulders.

          "You were waiting for me!" he said with quiet conviction.

          "Was I?" I looked up into his pleading, intense, incredibly tender blue-grey eyes.

          "You must have been," he replied, "because here I am."

          And since there was no one else to refute what he said or give me another purpose in life, I believed. Somehow, in that instant, it seemed so perfectly logical. I rose slowly as if in a dream, rising within that gentle grip, and left my lethargy on the bale of hay to die in the serenity of the woods.