I didn't want him to say anything more. I wanted the letting go to be silent, to go quickly.

Whit nodded. A deep, emphatic nod at something I could not see or hear. He said, 'I will miss you.'

'I'm sorry.' My words cracked as I spoke. I felt I'd been the seducer. I'd sat on the sea rocks like one of Homer's sirens and hired him. Even though he was ending it as much as I, I felt I was really the betrayer. That I'd betrayed my confessions of love to him, my promise of anniversaries.

'I don't want you to be sorry,' he said. 'The thing is, I needed' - he reached out and touched my face, a place near my jaw - 'I needed to love you.'

He could have meant a million things, but what I wanted to believe was that his grief over his wife has deadened his heart and falling in love with me had resurrected it. I wanted to believe that now he would give his heart back to the monastery. He would go on foraging in the rookery, waking to the sound of frogs in the bent island oaks, to the smell of Brother Timothy's bread, catching these little bits of God showing through.

'It's true of both of us, then. I needed to love you, too.' It came out with so much awkwardness, so much ineptness, I felt as if I should go on explaining, but he smiled at me and stepped closer.

He said, 'I told you we'd be damned and saved both. Remember?'