Before pulling away, she sat in her car and looked across the street to the private dock. She saw him: shirt off, glistening with the sweat of loved hard work, jeans wet at the bottom where his feet hung into the water.

He was waxing his sailboat. Again.

She was overwhelmed with sadness and a need to reach out and help him. But how? She pulled the folded slip from her wallet. A business card ripped in half, the number scrawled hastily in black ink. She remembered receiving it, the crisp tear, ragged lines, now smoothed by the regular fingering of the business card on days like today. Days when she knew the phone call needed to happen, as uncomfortable as it might be. As hard as it might be to explain. It had been in there for months, his daughter imploring her to call if anything happened… seemed strange, but she never knew how to have the conversation. It had to now.

She held her breath when dialing. Thankful the voicemail picked up she breathed. A simple message, “You have to do something.”