My heart gives a weird double-thump, but I keep my voice steady. “Oh yeah? Is he painting?”
She nods. “Mostly just staring at it. I think he’s waiting for inspiration or something.”
“Maybe he’s just stuck, like me,” I say, which is a little too honest, but Cassie doesn’t seem to notice.
She finishes her cookie, wipes her hands on her jeans, and asks, “Do you ever think about dating him?”
I blink. “Where did that come from?”
“I dunno. Sara says he’s handsome. So do my teachers.”
I want to tell her that Nathan is more than handsome, that he is complicated and kind and slightly broken in a way that feels familiar. I want to tell her I think about him more than Ishould, that I see him everywhere—in the way the light hits the lighthouse at dawn, in the sound of gulls bickering over a crust in the shape of her own uncertain smile. But I can’t say any of that. Instead, I say, “I’m not sure I’m ready for dating, Cass.”
She studies me, head cocked. “Maybe you don’t have to be ready. Maybe you just have to try.”
The wisdom lands like a stone at the bottom of a well, sending up a small, bright splash. I ruffle her hair as she passes, and she bats me away, giggling, before heading up to her room.
I stand in the kitchen, shell-shocked. I pour myself another mug of coffee, ignore the fact that it’s nearly dinnertime, and return to my desk. The laptop waits, open and impassive. The words I typed that morning are still there, but now, with Cassie’s voice ringing in my ears, I feel a new, nervous energy.
I start to write. Not about the lighthouse, not about pirates or sea monsters or the haunted house. I write about a woman who has lost everything she thought she needed, and a girl who is teaching her how to build something new from the pieces. I write about the way salt air gets into your skin, the way light bends around the edges of heartbreak, the way laughter can be both a shield and a bridge.
I don’t stop to edit or second-guess. I just type, and the words come faster, clumsier, but more alive than anything I’ve written in years. My fingers cramp, my shoulders ache, but I keep going. Cassie’s wisdom echoes. Maybe you don’t have to be ready. Maybe you just have to try.
When I finally look up, the sky is dreamsicle-orange and dusty pink. There’s a golden hour that belongs to the guest cottage alone, when the sun, tumbling westward, sneaks through the warped windowpanes and turns the floorboards into a melting river of light. I’m halfway up the stairs when I hear it, Cassie’s voice, thin and bright, threading through the spacebetween her door and the jamb. I freeze, one foot hovering above a groaning step, my fingers gone white on the banister.
She’s on the phone. I can tell by the cadence, the lift and drop of her sentences, how her laughter comes in sudden, tidal rushes before cutting off. I know I shouldn’t listen. I know, I know. But there’s something in her voice that stops me, a waver I haven’t heard since the night the pediatrician called with her allergy test results, and I spent an hour holding her in the bathroom while she sobbed for her forbidden peanut butter.
She says, “No, he’s not my stepdad, dummy. It’s not like that.” The bed frame squeaks as she shifts, and I picture her sitting cross-legged, picking at a fraying edge of the duvet, phone balanced between ear and shoulder. “He’s just…around a lot. Mom says he’s just a friend, but I think she likes him. Maybe more than just likes him.”
My pulse does a strange thing, skipping out of rhythm and then resuming, slightly off-beat. I lean against the wall and press my thumb into the place above my heart where the ache has been growing all spring. I can see her room from here—door ajar, posters curling at the corners, a constellation of shells and bottle caps arrayed on the windowsill. Her sneakers are abandoned just outside, one tipped over, as if she’d kicked them free mid-sentence.
She’s silent for a second, then, “Yeah, he’s nice. And smart. But it’s still weird.” Her voice drops, and I have to strain to catch it. “Like, when she laughs at his jokes, it’s a different laugh. Not the way she used to laugh with Dad.” There’s a creak as she stands, and her shadow flickers on the wall through the crack in the door. “I want to be happy for her. But sometimes I just want things to go back to the way they were before, you know?”
I want to knock, to interrupt, to tell her that nothing is ever “before” again, that the best we can do is swim through the present without drowning. But I remember Sara’s words on theporch—watch, record, react—and I force myself to stay, to let Cassie unspool this ache without rushing to tie it up.
The phone conversation picks up again, a low murmur from the other end, the words lost to distance and drywall. Cassie’s reply is soft and uncertain, not the bravado she wears like a shield. “Yeah. I mean, he’s cool. He showed me how to draw properly, and he knew all these names for shells. But sometimes I look at Mom, and it’s like she’s trying really hard not to mess up.” A pause, then, “I guess I’m doing that too.”
The words land harder than I expect. I slide down the wall until I’m crouched on the bottom stair, forehead pressed to my knees, trying not to inhale too loudly. The air in the hallway is thick with dust and the citrus-salt of laundry detergent, and I remember a thousand scenes like this. Cassie at six, screaming about a lost tooth; her at eight, shutting herself in her room after her first fight with a friend; her three years ago, standing at the edge of the driveway, eyes brimming as the hearse pulled away.
“But you still miss him, right?” Amaya asks, and it comes through so clearly I wonder if the phone is on speaker.
“Every day,” Cassie says. There’s no hesitation. “But I don’t want Mom to be lonely, either. I just… I don’t know how to do both.”
There’s a shuffle on the line, the intimate sound of two kids doing their best not to cry, and I realize I’m doing the same. My hands are shaking, and the rawness of the moment is so exposed, so unvarnished, that I want to gather it up and keep it safe, never let anyone, least of all Cassie, see how deeply it hurts.
She laughs, brittle but real. “Anyway, I have to go. Mom gets weird if I’m on the phone too long. She says my brain will turn to oatmeal.” She hangs up, and I hear her flop back onto the bed, the mattress sighing under her.
I wait, counting out thirty slow breaths. On the other side of the door, silence pools. I hear the lazy whir of her ceiling fan, thesoft thud of her sketchbook falling to the floor, and then, finally, her voice.
“Miss you, Dad,” she says, and the words pierce straight through the wall, straight through me.
I stay there for a long time, letting the sadness roll through me, letting the light from the window fade into dusk. I want to be the kind of mother who knows what to say, who can stitch the edges of grief into something less jagged. But tonight, all I can do is listen.
When the house is dark and the only sound is the hiss of the ocean beyond the glass, I tiptoe to Cassie’s room. The door is still ajar, and she’s already asleep, hair tangled across her cheek, one arm curled around the stuffed turtle she’s had since she was three. I watch her breathe, the slow, even rise and fall, and promise myself that tomorrow, I’ll try to do better.
But for now, I let her be. I back down the hallway, the stairs cool under my feet, and find the notebook on the kitchen table where I left it. I open to a blank page, hand trembling only a little, and write:
Cassie is learning to let go. I am learning to watch.I close the book, press my palm to its cover, and try to believe it.