"You must have liked it in polar bear country."
I smiled. "Staying put was the easiest thing to do."
He expanded my answer for me. "You find yourself in a spot that fits and stay there."
"I guess. When Doug died, I wasn't left with many options. Alaska seemed to suit me at the time."
"You were on an island, hundreds of miles out in the Bering Sea. Most people would have gone daft with that kind of isolation."
It disturbed me someone else was doing research besides my niece Maureen. I answered anyway, in more detail than necessary. "My job while I was married was clerking in a military base store." I picked sand from a piece of chicken and continued. "Once I got my head together, I went back to college in Anchorage, got my degree and teaching certificate. Jobs were scarce so I signed a contract to teach for two years, on St. Paul Island. The isolation was comfortable."
"Like not having to see your mother?" When he saw the look on my face, he immediately apologized. "Sorry. That's a tad personal."
"True. But I'll confess to it anyway. There was some inertia involved. The more I stayed there, the harder it was to leave. I almost signed on for a second stint."
"But you didn't. You made the effort and left. What made you finally come east?"
"Guilt, for running away I guess. I've always managed to have more than my share of that. I was offered a job in Virginia, near Washington and accepted, on the spur of the moment."
"Now you're sorry you did?"
I smiled. "A conversation at dawn this morning with my sister made me know coming back was the right decision." He asked about my new position in Virginia.
"I'm disappointed at my choice of job and location," I answered, "but talking to Suzie has opened a world back up. The job's not difficult; just boring." I added, "And my supervisor is a jerk."
Paul picked up a shell shard and tossed it back and forth in his hands. "Life should be more than just getting used to it." He looked over to me. "Why don't you quit and move to Boston?"
I laughed. "You're a real control-type guy, aren't you?" He didn't bother to disagree. "Don't listen to me," I continued. "Maybe I don't adapt well to change."
Paul seemed to ponder this. "Me too," he answered. "Sometimes death forces the issue."
"Your turn," I said.
"My life is far less exciting," he said.
"I'll bet!"
"Really. I run a business that helps other businesses get going. They're located all over the country and with a couple overseas, so I travel a lot. That's all. I have a dozen people helping me and I'll admit I've been lucky because I don't charge much for my service. Instead I take a small piece of the businesses I help. We're both either successful or fall on our faces. Enough of my clients have made a go of it to pay the bills."