The Complete Where Dreams - Volume 1 of 2

FEBRUARY 1-7

“See.” Melanie waved a negligent flick of her fingers toward the lounge as they left the restaurant.

Russell glanced over the heads of the dozens of little groups in the lounge. One of the top “meat markets” in town. The best place to meet the other fast-rising singles of Seattle’s finest, Cutters’ bar, if he’d cared for such things. Once he had, which was weird.

Then he spotted them and his mind froze the scenario. The perfect image. The image that passed by when the camera had missed the moment. The image that could never be recreated no matter what was done in the studio.

Angelo’s wine reviewer, still perfectly put together, not a hair astray, dressed all in black as before, laughing or maybe crying on her friend’s bare shoulder. Blue and black, matching and contrasting. The third, serious, reserved, her clothes as light as her hair dark. A single arm extended forward and hand resting palm-down between the shoulder blades of her grieving friend.

Three women. They were so close. Clearly they knew each other the way new friends couldn’t and the way lovers rarely did.

“Traveled Road…partway.” That’s what he’d call the shot if he had it. Or perhaps that carefully reserved and rarely bequeathed “Untitled” for when no mere title could possibly add more.

It was easy to picture them together in a couple of decades: hair gray, surface beauty faded, and all three still close. Still radiant.

Lime Kiln Lighthouse

San Juan Island

First lit: 1914

Automated: 1962

48.5159 -123.1524

The last major lighthouse established in Washington State, it faces Canada and still watches over the entrance to Haro Strait. It was also the last to receive electricity, not until after WWII.

It is one of the best known lighthouses in the state, known far and wide as a whale observatory. Pods of orcas and gray whales frequently pass close in front of the lighthouse’s craggy doorstep.