See You - In Montevideo

The ferry cut across the Rio de la Plata, the muddy brown water stretching endlessly in every direction. She stood at the railing, the wind pulling at her grey-streaked hair, and she thought about the last time she had made this crossing. She had been twenty-three years old, terrified and furious and heartbroken all at once. Now she was thirty-eight. The girl she had been felt like a stranger, someone she had known once, a long time ago.

An hour passed. Then two. The sun began to sink, the light softening into amber and rose. The fishermen packed up their gear and went home. Couples strolled past, their voices low and intimate. A street vendor selling churros called out to passersby in a singsong voice.

So this is me, finally showing up. Late. Too late, probably. But I’ll be here. At the bench on the rambla, the one just past the old pier, every evening until the end of the month. I’ll be the old man with the grey beard and the bad leg, staring at the water like he’s waiting for a ghost. See You in Montevideo

“You came.”

She stopped at a café near the mercado and ordered a coffee. The waiter brought it with a small glass of water, the way they always did. She sat at a table by the window and watched the people passing by: couples holding hands, old men playing chess, children chasing pigeons. Life, ordinary and unremarkable, happening all around her. The ferry cut across the Rio de la

He nodded slowly. “I understand.”

If you come, I’ll be there. If you don’t, I’ll understand. I’ll stay anyway. It’s the least I can do. Now she was thirty-eight

She felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

“You look terrible,” she said.

She had taken the ferry anyway, because she was young and stubborn and she needed to see for herself. She had walked the streets of Montevideo—the Ciudad Vieja, the rambla, the mercado del puerto—looking for a ghost. She had found nothing. Three days later, she had gone back to Buenos Aires and built a life out of the ruins of that promise. She had married someone else—a good man, a kind man, now gone five years to cancer. She had raised two children. She had grown old, or older, in a different way than she had imagined.