He set the plate before her. He watched her eat it clean.

"Where have you been?" he wanted to know.

Instead he said, "It's good to see you again."

She nodded at him, said something about being tired, bouncing around too many places, too many people. But he only heard, "I've spent every free moment with him, letting that stranger come inside me."

So his response probably sounded non-sequitur to her. "When's the last time you had a weekend to yourself?"

"A while. I don't know how long."

"Four weekends," he thought. "The weekend before that we went to the beach, and you laughed as I chased my hat as it rolled down the beach like a frisbee, towards the waves. I didn't have to catch it, but I really ran, really stretched for it."

And he'd caught it. He'd caught the hat three steps from the sea. It flashed into his head that he had time to stop, and maybe that'd impress all the people cheering him on, all the beach goers happy without a sense of doom.

But doom was his thing. He could ride under the edge of a tsunami for years. What were a few lapping waves.

He didn't try to slow. He ran full speed into the bay, pushing the sea in front of him, diving in at the last and immersing.

"If you run from pain, you'll always run," he said aloud.

"What?" she looked up at him.

"Those waves hurt, they were so cold," he said.