Everyone else fitted in easily. I just ate and offered polite banter as expected. He said the tree-hung blue bottles were to keep ghosts away. I suggested growing lavender along the wall. No one questioned me. We lounged in drunken sunshine, as when we all first met. Summer's not a time of year but time out of it, a place that's timeless; just heat, the scent of grass and hot wet stone, and smiles that come naturally. You kept smiling at me. I wanted to smile back, to move closer, but my reflection looked too ghostlike in your blue eyes.