For a while, we stayed close.
Tommy wrote from Australia. Ray sent letters from Germany. Nick eventually settled in Portugal.
Then the letters became less frequent.
Then they stopped.
I wrote too.
At first, I’d leave my letters on the hall table for my father to mail when he drove into town for the store. After a while, when nothing came back, I stopped giving him any.
Eventually, silence begins to feel like an answer.
I married, had two children, buried my parents, lost my wife six years ago, became a grandfather, and grew old in the same town where we’d all started.
But I never forgot the lake. I went back many times over the years.
Sometimes I’d sit on our bench and trace those four initials, remembering the boys we’d been and wondering where life had taken them.
