On our first afternoon in Marseille, while waiting for time to check into our Airbnb, Colin and I wandered into an unassuming coffee shop in the Le Panier neighborhood. The tiny shop was empty except for the owner, who was reading quietly. After we ordered our drinks and Colin pulled out his laptop to work and the owner went back to whatever he was doing, I walked over to investigate a wall covered in small glass vials.

They were all filled with sand—white, black, red, brown, small grains, large grains, some with tiny shells. Each vial had a simple label identifying the beach it had come from. As I scanned the labels – Sri Lanka! Tunisia! Argentina! – my eyes landed on one in particular.

Aghia Anna, Naxos. Greece. The very beach where Colin and I had gone kayaking and he had asked me to marry him three years before. A small beach on a small island in a totally different country.

What were the chances??