The café at the east entrance of the park was a small establishment with large windows
and mismatched furniture that somehow worked together to create an atmosphere of
comfortable eclecticism. Eleanor sat across from Martin at a table near the back, the
wooden box placed carefully beside her, the new river stone resting on the table between
them.
A pot of Earl Grey steamed gently, filling the air around them with its bergamot fragrance.
Eleanor poured for both of them, a habitual gesture that felt simultaneously foreign and
familiar.
“You still take it black,” she observed as Martin lifted his cup without reaching for the
cream or sugar.
“Some things don’t change,” he replied, then added with a rueful smile, “though plenty do.”
They sipped their tea in silence for a moment, the awkwardness between them not
uncomfortable exactly, but noticeable—like a piece of furniture slightly out of place in an
otherwise orderly room.
“Tell me about Switzerland,” Eleanor said finally, setting down her cup. “Tell me how you
survived.”
Martin nodded, as if he had expected this request. “It was a clinical trial for an
experimental immunotherapy. My oncologist here wasn’t optimistic about my chances,
but he had a colleague in Zurich who was doing promising work. It was a long shot, but at
that point, any shot was better than none.”
Eleanor listened as he described the treatment—the grueling side effects, the months of
uncertainty, the gradual realization that the cancer was retreating. He spoke matter-offactly, without drama or self-pity, but she could read between the lines, could imagine the
pain and fear he had endured alone.
“It took three years before they would use the word ‘remission,'” he continued. “And even
then, they were cautious. I had to stay in Switzerland for follow-up treatments and
monitoring. I found work teaching English at an international school. Built a life there, day
by day, not daring to think too far ahead.”
“And when you knew you would live?” Eleanor asked, the question she had posed on the
phone returning now. “Why didn’t you reach out then?”
Martin ran a finger around the rim of his teacup, his gaze following the circular motion. “By
then, it had been almost four years. I convinced myself you would have moved on. That
reappearing would only disrupt whatever new life you had built.” He looked up at her. “And
I was ashamed. Of my cowardice. Of the way I’d left.”
“You should have been,” Eleanor said, not unkindly but with honesty. “It was cruel, what
you did. Not the leaving itself—I could have understood that—but the disappearing. The
not knowing.”
“I know that now.” His voice was soft with regret. “At the time, I thought I was being…
merciful.”
“There’s nothing merciful about denying someone the chance to say goodbye properly.”
“No, there isn’t.” He met her gaze directly. “That’s why I’m here now. Better fifteen years
late than never.”
Eleanor felt a flicker of anger at the platitude, but it faded quickly. What purpose would
anger serve now? The goodbye had been given and received. The collection was complete.
This conversation was… something else. An epilogue, perhaps. Or a prologue to something
not yet defined.
“Are you staying in town long?” she asked, steering toward more neutral territory.
“I’ve taken a position at the university,” Martin replied. “Department of Comparative
Literature. I start in the fall semester.”
Eleanor blinked in surprise. “You’re staying permanently?”
“That’s the plan.”
She absorbed this information slowly, like drops of water being added one by one to an
already full glass. Martin wasn’t just back for a ceremonial goodbye; he was reestablishing
himself in her city, creating the potential for repeated encounters, for an ongoing presence
in her carefully ordered life.
“And if I had refused to meet you?” she asked. “If I had hung up when you called, or not
shown up at the bridge?”
“I would have respected your decision,” he said. “The position is independent of… this.” He
gestured between them. “I’m not expecting anything, Ellie. I just wanted to give you what I
failed to fifteen years ago, and to… I don’t know… open a door, if you were interested in
walking through it.”
Eleanor studied him across the table, this man who had once been the center of her world,
then an absence, a blank space, a catalogued goodbye, and now… what? A ghost made
flesh again? A disruption to her carefully constructed taxonomy? A second chance?
She reached for the new river stone and rolled it between her fingers, feeling its smooth
surface, its comforting weight.
“I’ve spent fifteen years defining myself as a collector of endings,” she said thoughtfully.
“My entire identity, my professional reputation, my sense of purpose—all built around the
concept of farewell. I’m not sure I know how to be anything else.”
“You don’t have to be anything else,” Martin replied. “The Eleanor I knew was never just one
thing. She was complex, multifaceted. The collection was part of you, not all of you.”
“The Eleanor you knew doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I’m counting on that.” At her questioning look, he continued, “The Martin you knew doesn’t
exist either. That’s not a tragedy, Ellie. It’s just the truth of time passing. We evolve, or we
decay.”
A server approached their table, asking if they wanted anything else. Eleanor ordered a
slice of lemon cake to share, the decision automatic, not realizing until after the server left
that she had remembered Martin’s favorite.
“Still a sweet tooth, I see,” he said with a small smile.
“Some things don’t change,” she echoed his earlier words.
When the cake arrived, they ate in companionable silence, the awkwardness between
them easing slightly. Through the café windows, Eleanor watched the late afternoon light
turn golden, casting long shadows across the park. She thought of her collection room at
home, of the empty space on her shelf where Martin’s complete goodbye would now
reside. A closed chapter. A finished story.
Except here he was, sitting across from her, very much alive and present, challenging the
finality of her carefully preserved endings.
“I have a confession,” Martin said, setting down his fork. “The article wasn’t the first time I
learned about your collection.”
Eleanor looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been following your work for years. Ever since I first saw a small mention of your
collection in an arts journal maybe eight years ago. I’ve read every article, watched every
interview. I even attended your exhibition at the Whitman Gallery last year, though I made
sure you didn’t see me.”
Eleanor stared at him, trying to process this revelation. “You’ve been… watching me? All
this time?”
“Not in a stalking way,” he hastened to clarify. “More like… keeping track of your
accomplishments from afar. Being proud of you, even if you didn’t know it.”
“Why didn’t you approach me then? At the exhibition?”
Martin sighed. “I almost did. I stood in the back of the room during your lecture on ‘The
Aesthetics of Farewell.’ You were brilliant, Ellie. So poised, so articulate. The audience was
captivated. And I thought, who am I to intrude on the life she’s built? What right do I have to
reappear and potentially disrupt all of this?”
“But you changed your mind.”
“Yes.” He looked down at his hands, then back up at her. “When I heard you describe
goodbye #137—our goodbye—I realized something was missing from your analysis. The
element of choice. You talked about how some goodbyes are forced upon us, some are
chosen, and some simply happen through neglect or distance. But you never mentioned
the goodbyes that are stolen from us—the ones where the choice is taken away.”
Eleanor remembered that lecture, remembered discussing that very taxonomy of
farewells. Martin was right; she had overlooked that category. Perhaps deliberately, given
her own experience.
“So you decided to give me back that choice,” she said, understanding dawning.
“Exactly. To give you the option of a proper ending, on your terms. To complete your
collection in the way it deserved.”
Eleanor looked at the wooden box beside her, thinking of the river stone inside, and then at
the matching stone on the table between them. Two parts of the same journey, separated
and yet connected.
“And this?” She picked up the new stone. “What choice does this represent?”
Martin hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “The choice to consider that not all stories
end with goodbye. That some might circle back, begin again in a new form. Different, but
with echoes of what came before.”
Eleanor turned the stone over in her hand, feeling its contours, the places where the river’s
persistent flow had worn away the rough edges, leaving something transformed but still
recognizably itself.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” she admitted. “Start something new with you. There’s too
much history, too much lost time.”
“I’m not asking for that,” Martin said gently. “Not yet, anyway. I’m just asking for…
conversations. Like this one. A chance to know who you are now, and for you to know who I
am. No expectations beyond that.”
Eleanor considered his proposal. What would it mean to allow Martin back into her life, not
as a finished story in her collection, but as an ongoing narrative? How would it affect the
careful order she had imposed on her world, her understanding of endings and beginnings?
“I have conditions,” she said finally.
“I’m listening.”
“First, I need time. This is… a lot to process. I can’t just jump into regular meetings or
conversations.”
Martin nodded. “Of course.”
“Second, I need honesty. Complete transparency. No more disappearing, no more
withholding information because you think it’s ‘better for me’ not to know.”
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.”
“And third,” Eleanor continued, her voice firm, “I need to understand that this isn’t about
erasing what happened. The goodbye in my collection stays there. It’s real and valid and
part of my work. Whatever… this might become doesn’t negate that ending.”
“I wouldn’t want it to,” Martin said. “That goodbye is part of our story. Pretending it didn’t
happen would be another kind of dishonesty.”
Eleanor studied him, looking for signs of insincerity or manipulation. She found none. Only
a patient openness, a willingness to accept whatever boundaries she needed to establish.
“Alright,” she said, coming to a decision. “I can’t promise anything beyond this moment.
But I’m willing to… consider the possibility of a new collection. A taxonomy of second
chances, perhaps.”
The smile that spread across Martin’s face was like sunrise after a long night—gradual,
warming, illuminating. It reminded her of why she had fallen in love with him all those years
ago, and also confirmed how different they both were now. That love belonged to their
past. Whatever might grow between them now would be something entirely new, if it grew
at all.
“Thank you,” he said simply.
Eleanor placed the new river stone in her pocket, separate from the wooden box and its
preserved artifacts. A beginning of something, not yet defined enough to be catalogued or
displayed.
As they prepared to leave the café, Martin settling the bill despite her protests, Eleanor felt
a curious lightness. For fifteen years, she had carried the weight of an incomplete ending, a
goodbye that refused to be properly archived. Now that burden was lifted, the collection
complete at last.
But in its place was something else—not a weight exactly, but a presence. The stone in her
pocket, the possibility of a new taxonomy, a different kind of collection. Beginnings were
messier than endings, less defined, harder to categorize. They required a tolerance for
uncertainty that ran counter to her collector’s instinct for order and classification.
Outside the café, they paused on the sidewalk, the awkwardness of parting hovering
between them.
“May I call you?” Martin asked. “Not tomorrow or the next day. But… sometime?”
Eleanor nodded. “You can call. I may not always answer, but you can call.”
“That’s all I’m asking for. The possibility.”
As they said their temporary goodbyes—not the ceremonial, final farewell of the bridge, but
something casual, open-ended—Eleanor found herself mentally noting the qualities of this
particular departure. The gentleness of it, the absence of finality, the implicit promise of
continuation.
For a collector of goodbyes, it was an unfamiliar species, one that didn’t fit neatly into her
existing taxonomy. Perhaps it needed a new category entirely. Perhaps it wasn’t a goodbye
at all, but something else—a comma rather than a period, a pause rather than an ending.
Walking home alone, the wooden box under one arm and the new river stone heavy in her
pocket, Eleanor considered the irony of her situation. She, who had built her life around the
study and preservation of endings, now found herself contemplating the uncharted
territory of returns, of circles closing and opening again, of stories that refused to end
neatly.
The sun was setting as she reached her house, casting her collection room windows in
amber light. She climbed the stairs slowly, unlocked the door, and entered her archive of
farewells. The familiar surroundings comforted her, the carefully labeled displays, the
organized drawers, the gentle hush of preserved memories.
She placed the wooden box on her cataloguing desk and removed Martin’s river stone—the
original one, the artifact of their first goodbye. She returned it to its display case, alongside
the notebook where she had recorded their proper farewell at the bridge.
Goodbye #137 was complete at last. The collection was whole.
Then, instead of leaving the room as she usually would after adding a new artifact, Eleanor
crossed to the far wall where a small alcove stood empty. It was a space she had never
quite known what to do with, a architectural quirk of the old house that didn’t fit her display
scheme.
She took the second river stone from her pocket and placed it carefully on the small shelf
in the alcove. It looked odd there, a solitary object with no label, no categorization, no
context. An anomaly in her meticulously ordered archive.
But as she stepped back to look at it, Eleanor felt a strange sense of rightness about its
placement. Perhaps every taxonomy needed space for the exceptions, the aberrations, the
things that didn’t quite fit the established categories. Perhaps that was how collections
evolved, how knowledge expanded—by accommodating the outliers, the unexpected
findings, the pieces that challenged the existing order.