Nathan’s face splits into a delighted grin.
“That’s a compliment, by the way,” I assure him.
He crouches so he’s at Cassie’s eye level. “That’s exactly what I was going for. You know how, when you wake up too early, and everything outside the window is kind of washed out? I wanted the pelican to appear like it was halfway between a dream and being awake.”
Cassie nods, utterly serious. “My teacher says that’s called liminality.”
Nathan’s eyes flicker to mine. He’s impressed, or just amused. “Smart teacher,” he says.
She shrugs. “Mostly she lets us watch videos in science class.”
There’s an ease to the way Nathan talks with Cassie, a willingness to meet her logic on its own terms, that’s both comforting and a little disarming. I can tell he’s not humoring her. He’s interested.
After a few more paintings and a running commentary from Cassie (“That one’s definitely a nor’easter,” “Is the beach ever really that color?” “If you painted a tsunami, would people be mad?”), she spots the makeshift dessert table and darts off again.
Nathan straightens, exhaling as if he’s been holding his breath. “She’s something else.”
“Yes, she is. Sometimes I feel like I’m just following her around, trying not to slow her down.”
“Isn’t that what good parents do?” The word “parents” lands with a quiet weight. I find myself wanting to tell him about the long nights Cassie spent at my bedside after the accident, the ways she took care of me when I couldn’t take care of myself, but I don’t. Not yet.
We wander the room again, this time less like two halves of a nervous equation and more like, well, not quite a couple, but something parallel to it. He tells me about his latest series of seascapes, how he’s trying to capture the essence of the ocean in different lights, seasons, and moods. I talk a little about myown work, dancing around the confession that most days I don’t write at all.
“It’s like I’m waiting for a sign,” I say and then flush. “That sounds ridiculous.”
“Not at all. I think we’re all looking for signs. Most of us just ignore them when they show up.”
We reach the end of the gallery, where a final painting hangs alone. It’s smaller than the others, a study in near-white: surf breaking over a sandbar, sky and sea almost indistinguishable except for a single, blurred shadow that might be a gull, or maybe just an accident of the brush.
“This one’s my favorite,” Nathan says. “It reminds me that sometimes it’s okay for things not to be clear.”
I look at the painting, then at him, and I’m grateful for the ambiguity.
Cassie rejoins us, breathless from her dessert sprint. “Can we go home soon?” she asks, leaning heavily into my side. “I need to finish my math homework before it gets too late.”
Nathan looks at me, a question in his eyes, but I can’t read it. Instead, I gather Cassie under my arm and thank him for the invitation, for the conversation, for making the wind visible.
“Anytime.”
As we head for the door, Cassie tugs at my sleeve. “He likes you,” she whispers.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, but I’m smiling, and my chest feels lighter than it has in months.
Outside, the cold air is bracing, and the night sky is scattered with stars I never saw in the city. Cassie skips ahead, collecting stray shells and bits of gravel from the sidewalk.
I watch her, and I think of that pelican, half in a dream, half awake, both states impossibly, beautifully true at once.
9
Diane
The ocean is all silver and shadow, the air sticky with the threat of a squall, when I find myself again on Sara’s porch. The invitation had been casual—“Drop by anytime, if you need a break from your head”—but the urgency in her voice left little doubt that she wanted company. Or maybe I’m projecting, because I want it too. Cassie is at the pool with her best friend, Amaya, the house is empty except for my failure to write, and the walls of the guest cottage feel suddenly too thin to contain all my thoughts.
Sara’s house perches at the edge of the bluff, gray clapboard with a tilt like it’s inching toward flight. The porch is sunstruck, boards softened to gray by decades of salt and weather, and from here the ocean is a full 180-degree panorama. A chime made from old teaspoons rings lazily above the door, and I think I see a ghost of my mother in the shape of Sara’s silhouette behind the window. It’s a trick of the glass, but it sets my chest humming all the same.
I clutch my empty notebook against my ribcage and raise a tentative fist to the screen door. Sara answers, her good hand steady on the frame, the other cradled close to her body like abird she’s coaxing back to health. She’s in a faded linen blouse and navy-blue pedal-pushers, her hair pinned up. She smiles, wide, as if I’m the answer to a riddle she’s been dying to tell.
“You made it,” she says, as if I’d scaled Everest and not just walked the two hundred yards from my front door.