Chapter 10 - Salt Water and Sunlight
Six months later.
The Atlantic Ocean stretched out toward the horizon like an endless sheet of hammered silver beneath the pale blue sky of early spring. The tide was out, leaving behind wide, hard-packed flats of wet sand littered with smooth gray stones, fragments of clam shells, and tangled ribbons of dark kelp.
Sadie stood on her own two feet, her little yellow rubber boots planted firmly in the damp sand.
She was fourteen months old now. She had thick, honey-brown curls that whipped around her cheeks in the sea breeze, and a sturdy, fearless balance that had carried her across every rocky trail on my father’s farm. She wore a bright red fleece jacket that made her look like a tiny, joyful beacon against the muted gray and blue tones of the coastline.
"Mama! Look!" she squealed, pointing a chubby, sand-crusted finger toward a shallow tidal pool.
Inside the pool, a tiny hermit crab was scuttling across a bed of green sea moss.
"I see it, sweet girl," I said, crouching down beside her. I didn't hover. I didn't reach out to steady her with frantic, trembling hands. I sat back on my heels, letting her lean over the water, letting her discover the world on her own terms, within reach of my arms but outside the prison of my fear.
She reached down, splashed the surface with an open palm, laughed with her whole chest when the saltwater sprayed her nose, and then turned to look at me, her eyes shining with pure, untamed wonder.
In my canvas tote bag sat a new notebook.
It was not the black-and-white ledger I had kept beside the bottle warmer in Willow Creek—that notebook had been entered into evidence as Exhibit C in a criminal trial that had ended four months ago with Miles being sentenced to eight years at the state penitentiary in Concord.
This notebook was bound in soft, sea-green linen. Inside it were no feeding times, no medication dosages, no frantic logs of midnight tears or descriptions of bleeding rashes.
Inside this book were sketches: a drawing of a starfish Sadie had found on the rocks; the pressed leaf of an apple blossom from her grandfather’s orchard; a list of words she had learned this week (*boat, bird, more, happy*); and the rough draft of a children's story I had begun writing for the local library's early-literacy program.
Elena walked down the dune path behind us, carrying two steaming thermoses of coffee, her hair tied back in a loose bandana.
"The tide’s turning, Laurel," she called out, her voice carrying over the rhythmic crash of the surf. "Dad said the chowder will be ready on the stove in twenty minutes."
"We’re coming!" I called back.
Sadie took three waddling, confident steps toward the water’s edge, then turned back, extended both arms toward me, and shouted, "Mama, up!"
I stood, scooped her into my arms, and swung her up into the air. She giggled, her tiny hands tangling into my hair, her warm, clean breath against my cheek smelling of oatmeal, cinnamon, and the salt spray of the sea.
I looked out past the crashing waves, toward the open horizon where the sky met the water in an unbroken, luminous line.
I didn't know what the next year would bring. I didn't know how I would explain the past to Sadie when she was old enough to ask questions about her name and the father whose face she would never remember. The legal battles were finished, but the road of raising a child alone in a quiet coastal town was vast, uncertain, and stretching out into a future with no guarantees.
Yet as Sadie pressed her forehead against mine, pointing out toward a white gull soaring effortlessly against the ocean wind, I felt no panic. No trembling in the bone. No dread lurking in the corners of my mind.
May you like
The cage had been broken from the inside out.
The notebook was ours to write, the pages were entirely blank, and for the very first time in my life, the air we were breathing belonged to no one else but us.
