NBC fired Brian Williams for his story of coming under fire while reporting in Iraq. He had told the story again and again for over twelve years. Details morphed. But his story was true in the timeline as it grew to become a story. Elise loved him as an anchor — his firing was so unfair.

Elise was born with all her stories in her. As a young adult, she and a friend had cycled around Europe, taking a month or more. Her friend met the man who later became her husband. Elise would wait some years before finding her first husband. Then returning often to Europe and visiting Corsica, an island she loved.

Lauren visited. Even she didn’t know really if she visited from a sense of duty or really just friendship. Some years early, it would have clearly been friendship. More recently, as she became wrapped in Elise’s story, the visits had become more an obligation. Lauren had just returned from Sicily. A trip with her husband arranged and accompanied by her parents. They were great travel coordinators; Lauren was happy to be along rather than trying to negotiate the culture with her husband alone.

“Oh, I was in Sicily. I spent a month there. I loved it. I bicycled all around with a friend. Circumnavigated the island like you. I was about twenty. It must be so different now, although those areas don’t change as much.”

Tucker Carlson had been in the news. Fired. Elise found true pleasure in that news. Asking about his background – he had attended then married the daughter of the Head of School at St. George’s — a school she had been able to see from her walks on the beach before the tumbled rocks and her unsteady gait made those excursions perilous. Tucker’s father, a chameleon of a man, had been ambassador to the Seychelles.

“Yes — I visited there with my first husband. He was French. We went by boat. Just like that movie we watched. What was it? About the French bride from a newspaper advertisement. The name was nonsense. Come on, you remember the film”