She grins, then looks at Nathan. “Are you still drawing, or did you give up?”
He holds the sketchbook aloft. “I did not give up. I pivoted.”
Cassie snorts but takes the bait. “Can I see?”
He hands her the book. On the page, a loose, gestural drawing of the beach at dawn, the shadows exaggerated, theclouds a wild scribble of gray. I recognize the outline of Cassie, half-crouched at the shore, hair whipping sideways like a flag.
She studies it, then shrugs. “Not bad,” she says, but she’s smiling.
Nathan leans toward her, bumping her shoulder. “High praise from the marine life champion.”
Cassie grins wider, then turns to me. “You should write a book about us,” she says. “You know, the family that collects dead things on the beach.”
“Maybe I will,” I say, and it gives me an idea.
She squints at me, then at the water. “We should do this every Saturday.”
“We will,” I say.
Nathan looks at me over Cassie’s head, his expression serious now. “You really mean it, don’t you?”
“About the beach, or the writing?”
“Both,” he says, and something in my chest flares up—gratitude or relief or just the small, ordinary miracle of being seen.
I let the feeling fill me, like air after a long swim.
For a while, we sit there, the three of us, arranged in an uneven row. Cassie sorts her shells into piles, categorizing by color and size. Nathan sketches Cassie and me from new angles, quick lines and big swathes of negative space. I outline chapter three, then lose myself in the act of watching them, the way their heads tilt in tandem, the way their hands brush as they reach for the same broken shell.
The wind shifts, carrying a cold spray that stings my cheeks and makes Nathan shiver. He pulls the cardigan tighter, then wraps an arm around my waist. The gesture is easy, almost unconscious, but it anchors me in the present, in this exact version of reality.
I lean into him, close my eyes, and listen to the waves, to Cassie’s running monologue about mollusks and beach glass, to the scratch of graphite on paper. The sun is high now, the light a little harsher, but I feel warm all the way through.
I am not waiting for something to go wrong. I am not bracing for the next loss, or the next goodbye. I am here, on this patch of sand, with these two people, and I am happy.
When I open my eyes, Nathan is watching me, his gaze soft and unguarded. He leans forward, then kisses my hair, just above the temple.
“You look peaceful,” he says.
I surprise us both by laughing. “I am.”
“Gross,” Cassie says, but there’s no heat in it.
Nathan smiles, and the three of us dissolve into easy, morning laughter, the kind that fills up all the empty space.
The tide creeps closer, lapping at our feet, and the day stretches ahead.
I turn back to my notebook, flip to a clean page, and begin again.
We lasta good hour before Cassie gets bored. She tries to hide it, poking at a horseshoe crab shell with the toe of her foot, but she keeps glancing up to see if we’re watching. When Nathan takes a break to shake out his hand, Cassie pounces.
“So,” she says, “have you actually decided when you’re doing it?”
“Doing what?” he asks.
Cassie groans, flops backward in the sand. “Getting married.”
I’m too surprised to deflect. “We were going to talk about it after—well, after things settled.”