Caught in the harshness of gray-brown bark, one brightly-colored ribbon fluttered in the breeze. Coming from the lake as it was, cold with the bitterness of a Michigan winter, the wind moved red satin as though it were trying to fight what touched it. As though it didn't want to be there, caught harshly, trapped, flapping uselessly like a bird trying to flee its captor.

Overhead the sky was a heavy gray-white; lake-effect snow always a threat in the middle of a northern winter. He had been here once, long ago, on these shores, though it had been the heat of summer then and his feet had been bare in the sand, his torso free of the confines of shirt, sweater and coat. His hands ungloved, his head, uncovered.

As he turned slowly to look up and down the rock-and-shell-strewn beige strip of sand, at the scrubs of brown-dead beach grass, he allowed his eyes to finally rest upon the cabin. White siding, grayed and streaked with dirt and rain, wind and debris, and nothing more than long-term neglect.

He'd all but forgotten this out-of-the-way place, where there were no neighbors either side, nothing across the one-lane broken asphalt road but miles and miles of forest. He'd barely learned how to start becoming a man the last time he'd stood here with her mother and father, her sister and brother. With her.

With Lucille.

Jeff sighed, one gloved hand rubbing down his face and nose as the past came back to him in vivid detail. This had been a tract of land her family had inherited from her mother's side, and since Charlevoix had been a ways from Kansas, they'd not come here often, she and her family.

But one summer they decided to try it, to see what kind of shape it was in, maybe fix it up to sell it. Both sixteen years of age, Lucille had asked her parents for permission, and then asked Jeff to join them for the two weeks they would be there. Jeff's own mother had raised an eyebrow; Ruth was no dummy, she knew what sixteen-year old kids were likely to get up to if left unsupervised without responsibilities to mold their time.

Grant, Jeff's father, had been unhappy because it meant he would lose his helping hand for two full weeks of summer when the farm was a very busy place. But whatever his wife had said to him in hushed tones behind closed doors had caused Grant to give in, and Jeff had found himself in Lucille's family's van, sharing the back row seat with her and her sister, April. He and Lucy had held hands, bumped noses, and smiled at each other the entire eight hundred and seventy-six-mile trip.

Her hair, the color of Virgil's. Her eyes, reminiscent of melted brown sugar, he used to tell her, just to hear her laugh. Musical, like her voice. Even then she would hum or sing, quietly or just loudly enough for him to make out the words, and he would smile, everything lighting up in response. Her voice was rich and deep and when she practiced sometimes he would simply close his eyes and let it wash over him, the way he did these days when Virgil brought the piano in the lounge to life.

He had come with her and her family the following summer as well, and then there had been graduation and the Air Force, and eventually marriage and Scott and Virgil and John, then Gordon and finally the end, with the arrival of Alan.

They'd always said they'd come back one day when the boys were older. One day had never come. And so now Jeff had returned, seventy-six years after he'd last seen the place. It had new owners now, a family who was distantly connected to one of International Rescue's agents. Suddenly a noise caught his attention and he turned to find a little girl of no more than five or six standing a few feet away.

Her blond hair was pulled back on one side with a red satin ribbon. On the other side, the hair hung loose, but still held the shape of once having been tied as well. Jeff looked at her shy face, then over at the beach's lone tree, where the out-of-place ribbon still fought against its tormentor and brightened the desolate landscape.

Silently he went to the tree, retrieved the one-foot length of slick softness and watched as the little girl's hopeful but wary eyes tracked his every movement. In his peripheral he saw the child's mother walking their way, but ignored her in favor of getting down on one knee and holding the ribbon out toward the girl.

Sheepishly she reached out and caught the end of it as the wind threatened to tear it from his grasp. She smiled at him, and he returned the smile, rising to his full height and watching as the mother approached, praised the child for having found her ribbon, then took it and grasped the girl's hand.

As mother and daughter made their way back up the sand and scrub to the cabin, the child turned and gave him a small smile and a wave. He smiled back, wiggled his fingers and felt peace wash over him. He somehow knew this had been the place to come, this beach where he and Lucille had first made love. He wasn't surprised the mother hadn't noticed him. He'd always heard that children and animals could see things other people couldn't.

Another movement caught his eye and he turned to his right. There she was, walking toward him with bare feet and a long, flowing white cotton dress. Her shoulder-length hair, wavy and shining, flowed only with her own movement; unaffected by the wind same as him. Slowly he peeled first one glove away, and then the other, letting them drop to the sand; knowing he wouldn't see them if he looked to find them.

His hat came off next. His coat. His shoes and socks. Closer and closer she came, smile widening. He felt himself changing, becoming younger and younger until he knew without having to see himself that he was as young as she looked.

By the time she reached him, stopped to stand in front of him and look up into his eyes, he wore nothing but the briefs he'd been wearing when it had happened. When Fate had finally decided his time had come on a vacation he hadn't intended to take to begin with.

And as the snow had begun to fall in that place of beauty in the mountains - peaceful and populated by nothing but Nature's flora and fauna, rocks and feet of snow, he'd felt surrounded by the presence of the woman he had never stopped loving for a second since the moment they'd met as small children. Surrounded, held, loved. When he'd fallen sideways into the snow, he hadn't felt the cold. He'd felt only her. And in the blink of an eye he'd been standing here on this beach, this place that held so much passion and quiet memories that spoke of them.

Her arms came around his neck and he buried his face in her hair. Inhaled her scent, reveled in the softness of her skin, and on an exhale breathed her name, feeling her shiver against him in return.

Jeff didn't know what the afterlife held for him, but knew as long as Lucille was by his side, he would go anywhere and do anything it asked.

The little girl pressed her nose to the glass and watched the half-naked man and the woman in her nightgown walk down the beach. She watched as they held each other close, and slowly faded from sight. She wasn't sure who or what she'd just seen, but she smiled and waved good-bye.

After all, the man had saved her hair ribbon from being lost.

"Would you look at that, honey," her mother said, and she turned to find Mommy was speaking to Daddy and pointing at the television screen. "I thought that man would live forever."

"A spokesman for the Tracy family confirmed just minutes ago that ninety-three year old billionaire Jefferson Grant Tracy passed away while at his vacation home in the remote Swiss Alps early this morning. His two oldest sons, Scott and Virgil, are rumored to have been with him at the time. I know I speak for all of us when we say this great icon of both the American space program and the corporate world touched a great many lives through his businesses, his personification of the American dream, and the many philanthropic organizations he and his family supported. Jeff Tracy, you will be missed."