Chapter 9 #2
“The sea monster is coming!”
Aidan launches himself at the sand around Paul's head, arms spread wide, yelling at a volume that suggests the threat is enormous and imminent.
“I'll save you, Mr. Paul!”
“It's a kraken! A baby kraken!”
Olson and Mitch join immediately. The three of them are now defending Paul's buried body from an imaginary sea creature with the coordination of a military unit and the volume of a rock concert.
Paul takes a goldfish cracker to the forehead.
“Friendly fire! Sorry, Mr. Paul!”
“The tentacle is wrapped around your head! Hold still!”
“I cannot move. I am buried.”
“Then you're the perfect bait! Mom, take a picture!”
I'm laughing too hard to hold my camera steady, but I pull out my phone and take the shot anyway. Paul's head, surrounded by a demolished fortress, three boys in mid-battle, sand flying, shovels waving, Aidan's face a mask of heroic determination.
Paul's expression in the photo is caught between genuine alarm and complete helplessness—and buried under both, joy. Pure, startled, unwilling joy. He forgot how to have fun. He's remembering against his will.
“The kraken is dead,” Paul says. “You killed it. Great work. Can somebody dig me out now?”
“You can't leave,” Aidan says, horrified. “There might be a second one.”
“There is not a second—”
“There's always a second kraken. That's how they work.”
“That is not how they work.”
“How do you know? Are you a kraken expert?”
I snort so hard water almost comes out of my nose. Paul's eyes cut to me. I press my hand over my mouth but it's too late—I'm gone. Laughing with my whole body, shoulders shaking, tears starting.
“You think this is funny,” Paul says.
“I think this is the funniest thing I've ever seen.”
“I am buried alive and being attacked by children.”
“You volunteered.”
“I was tricked.”
“You were asked. By eight-year-olds. And you said yes.”
The boys are now decorating his head with shells. Olson has placed a scallop shell on Paul's hair like a crown. Aidan is drawing what he says is a protective ward against krakens but looks like a lopsided star.
“You need protection,” Aidan explains.
“I need to be unburied.”
“Protection first. Then freedom.”
“Whose rule?”
“Mine. I just made it.”
Paul closes his eyes, takes a breath, and when he opens them, he looks directly at me. What he says is so quiet the boys don't hear it.
“Your kid is incredible.”
It's not a complaint. It's closer to wonder—like Aidan is a phenomenon Paul didn't expect and doesn't know how to categorize.
“Yeah,” I say. “He is.”
The moment sits between us, warm and salt-aired and real.
Then Aidan dumps a bucket of wet sand on Paul's head.
It takes fifteen minutes to dig Paul out, mostly because the boys keep refilling the hole every time progress is made.
When he finally stands, sand cascading off him, he looks like he's been through a war.
His hair defies gravity. The scallop shell crown is still perched on top, and he either hasn't noticed or has decided that removing it would only draw attention.
He brushes himself off with methodical patience.
“You let them bury you,” I say.
He watches the boys, who have abandoned the hole and are running toward the water in a pack, yelling about the kraken following them to sea. Their legs are tan and sandy and their voices carry across the beach.
“Aidan said it would take five minutes.”
“Aidan says a lot of things.”
“He said dragons are the most important part of any sand fortress and that without a dragon the structural narrative falls apart.”
“The structural narrative.”
“I'm quoting directly.”
“He's never had—” Paul stops. Starts again. “Dawson wasn't like that. Even at that age. After Holly—” Another stop. He picks up the scallop shell from where it's fallen. Turns it over in his hands. “I forgot what that's like. Kids that loud. That sure about everything.”
My throat aches. Because I hear what he's not saying. Dawson was quiet because his mother died and his father went quiet and nobody remembered to be loud again.
“Aidan has never met a silence he didn't want to fill,” I say.
“That's not a bad quality.”
“Tell that to his teachers.”
A real smile. Not the almost-smile, not the corner twitch. An actual, genuine Paul Spencer smile that transforms his entire face and makes my heart do an ill-advised acrobatic move.
It lasts maybe two seconds. Then he catches himself, and the smile retreats behind the jaw and the crossed arms.
But I saw it.
“You have sand in your eyebrows,” I tell him, because if I say what I'm actually thinking I will embarrass both of us.
“I have sand in my soul.”
“That's the most dramatic thing you've ever said.”
“Being buried alive by children changes a man.”
The boys are knee-deep in the surf now, jumping waves and screaming. Everything is loud and messy and alive the way childhood is supposed to be—salty and full of imaginary monsters that can be defeated with shovels and bravery.
Paul is standing next to me. Not close—two feet of respectable, neighborly distance.
But he's not leaving. He's not walking to his truck or finding an excuse to be elsewhere.
He's just standing on the beach, covered in sand, watching three kids fight the ocean.
And when he thinks I'm not looking, the smile comes back.
I'm always looking. That's my whole problem.
“I should thank you,” I say. “For the running light.”
He goes still. Not frozen—more the way water goes flat right before the tide turns.
“It was a safety issue,” he says.
“I know. You told me about twelve times before you fixed it yourself.” I keep my eyes on the water. “Thank you for making sure nobody hits me in the dark.”
Silence. The good kind—full instead of empty.
“You're welcome,” he says. Then, so quietly I almost miss it over the waves: “I couldn't sleep knowing it was out.”
My heart does the warm, expanding, terrifying thing. The one that feels like falling except the ground isn't coming.
I turn to look at him. He's already looking at me. Sand in his eyebrows. Shell crumbs in his hair.
“Paul—”
“Your mom and Mr. Paul are staring at each other!” Aidan screams from the water at a volume that carries across the entire beach. “Are you guys in love?”
I close my eyes.
“We're not staring,” I yell back.
“You were! Olson saw it too!”
“I saw it,” Olson confirms from the surf. “Definite staring.”
Paul pinches the bridge of his nose. Sand falls off his eyebrow. “I'm going to my truck.”
“Paul—”
“I need clothes that don't contain sand. And I need to be away from eight-year-olds narrating my personal life.”
He's walking. But slowly. And when he passes me, he pauses—just long enough for me to feel the warmth of him even at two feet of distance.
“It wasn't just a safety issue,” he says. Not looking at me. Looking at the ocean. “You should know that.”
Then he's gone. Walking up the beach, sand falling off him with every step, the tips of his ears red, and not from a sunburn.
I stand there.
The boys are reenacting the kraken battle in the shallows. The sun is warm. The ocean does what it always does.
It wasn't just a safety issue.
I press my hand to my chest.
My phone buzzes.
Lottie: Signed the lease. Osprey Lane is officially home. Cried in the parking lot but don't tell anyone.
Me: Your secret is safe. How's the studio room?
Lottie: One window. Blackout curtains. I can already see where the backdrops go. Em, I think this is actually happening.
Me: It's happening. You're building a life.
Lottie: We both are.
I put my phone down. Look out at the water, where three boys are still fighting imaginary sea creatures, sunburned and sandy and completely alive.
She's right. We both are.
I just didn't expect the thing I'm building to involve a grumpy marina owner with sand in his eyebrows who couldn't sleep knowing my light was out.