Evelyn looks up from the flowered branchlet to see her William, returned to pre-war youth, unkempt, hair absurdly long but (she slips a decade) the way of the world since the Beatles, he’s wearing his favourite olive-green corduroy blazer still a size too big, a labourer’s denim pants. Her heart swells, brimming with joy, her beau has returned to her in his prime of life, before the war, just when they are beginning their lifelong courtship. He is holding a cheap suitcase of medium size, a rucksack of coarse blue cloth hangs from his shoulders – the eyeglasses are a surprise.

She is wearing a broad straw sunhat and a large green cardigan over a floral cotton dress. He hasn’t seen her yet, she pulls at the sweater’s thick collar, she is glad she put on makeup this morning. She does that only as often as it is likely she will leave the house or have a visitor, otherwise what’s the use? His pension had to be apportioned judiciously and she would never wear cheap lipstick. What will her future husband think when he recognizes the old woman pruning the oleander bush is his widow of twenty years?

Of course it’s not him, she knows that, but until he turns to peer through the foliage to see her, Evelyn’s thoughts skim the surface of uncertainty, a thousand tiny inarticulate questions, like a shimmering school of minnows at the edge of the ocean’s endless possibility of miracles. There, kneeling in her own flower garden, she is astray, irretrievably lost. 

  The green of his eyes flares in the sunlight as he tilts his head to smile, “Aunt Evelyn?” 

No, William had blue eyes.