Twelve

David Thompson’s daughter Merle has a favorite story, one that she never forgets as she grows up, about how a man called Erik, who she never met, saved her father, and gave him back to her. What she is never told is what really happened to Erik; that is a secret that David and Esmé, his wife, keep to themselves. It would only hurt the child to know it, they think, and anyway, they are grateful enough for all three of them, as the first years pass.

*   *   *

Esmé dies at the age of sixty-three, and even Merle dies before her father, at seventy.

David Thompson himself lives to be one hundred and one years old.

His life is a happy life, and he remains physically fit, and fairly sharp right up to the end, as if he once drank some elixir of life.

In fact the only thing that ever ails him is arthritis in that troublesome ankle.

*   *   *

Eventually, a short but fatal pneumonia takes him.

Even on the morning of the day he dies, however, he still reads his paper over breakfast, from cover to cover. On this particular day, he reads about a startling discovery of a Viking burial, on a small island in the north.

He’s always been interested in archaeology, but it’s something else about this story that tickles at his memory.

Something about the island, though he can’t remember exactly what.

He thinks he might have been there, once, a lifetime ago.