When is he coming back?”

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”

I was twenty-two when I met Ethan. He was visiting Meadow Creek from New York City, staying with his aunt for the summer, and everything about him seemed impossibly sophisticated. He wore clean clothes that smelled like expensive detergent. He had a watch that actually worked. He spoke with the confidence of someone who’d seen more of the world than the ten square miles that comprised my entire existence.