Part I

– Lost and Found –

DEAR DENNY,

Hope the back is a little better each day: too much sitting at your desk, all that close editing, is not good for you. Please stop agonizing over semi-colons and hyphens and use the Spa Gift Pass before it’s out of date.

I’m just back from the Greek island of Hydra where as you know I’ve owned a little fisherman’s cottage for the past almost forty years. Upon my return, I see that the situation with my Aunt Dorothy gets worse. Perhaps the end is coming. It hurts to look at her body, so diminished. Only her face, especially when she smiles, which she so radiantly does when I bring my face close to hers, is a source of uplift. For a brief moment I feel like a flying fish.

While my aunt, aged ninety-three, is failing, Miep Gies, aged ninety-nine, is independent and clear-­headed. Her centenary is approaching in a few months. My long-time friend on Hydra whom I’ve mentioned many times to you, Lily Mack, only in her eighties, died while I was in Greece. When I’d mentioned her, you asked me who she was. As I knew

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