It was getting darker and almost everyone had left the beach leaving me alone to enjoy a moment of quiet from the maddening crowd. It had been such a good day that is once we'd reached this quiet little hamlet by the seaside. Some sense of awareness bade me to stop and I turned to see a figure walking towards me. I waited and saw that it was Ella.
A thrill of awareness shot through me. The woman affected me powerfully and I had struggled the entire course of the afternoon to keep the face of normality on with her so near. She drew close and again there was that smile that pulled you in.
"I often walk the beach alone at night. Perhaps, for once, two loners might share the experience?" She asked with a hopeful tint to her words.
I extended out my arm and like the lady that she was her arm slipped through it and we began to make our way up the beach together in silence. It was the most companionable time I'd spent with anyone in a very long time. It was special somehow and I didn't know what to say. We were almost back to the house, when she spoke.
"As I get older I become more conscious of how swiftly time is passing me by and how fleeting life can be. When we're young we have nothing but time, but time is in shorter supply now, than ever before. I find myself more and more reticent about facing, what little time is left to me, alone. Perhaps after the children have had their moment there will be time for us to consider something more between us?"
"I would like that very much Ella." I responded not at all shocked by what she had just said or by my own answer. I brought her hand up and I kissed the back of it lightly.
"Good night Caleb." She said softly before she faded away into the darkness, as she headed up the beach to the house.
How strange the way things could be at times. I'd come on this trip to help reassure my granddaughter's future and in the process I had met a woman worth spending the remaining future that I possessed with. I don't know if you could call it love or even lust at my age, although there certainly was attraction at play.
The best way to put the emotion that was between us already from the first moment we had met was simply that it felt right. It simply felt right and I was glad that I wasn't the only one of the two of us that felt that connection take place. If that had been the case I would have never said anything, but I would have just gone back to my mountains alone at the appointed time. But that wasn't what had happened and the future was richer for it.