Chapter 34
When she shut her eyes, her nostrils were filled with the campfire smell of charred books, mingling with the cooling breezes
of an ocean less than half a mile away. When she opened them, Van and Donna and Colin were down on the beach, burning the
Christmas tree.
She was on the embankment above them, beneath a white spruce, the seagrass blowing about her legs. The wind, cold and fresh,
caught at her hair, at the brown robe wrapped around her for warmth. Donna and Colin were dancing together while Van played
something on a ukulele. He only knew one chord, as far as Gwen could tell, but it sounded pretty good all the same. Donna
tossed her hair, and by the firelight, Gwen saw a necklace of sand dollars about her neck. Whitecaps surfed in with a crash
and a hush, luminescent in the moonlight.
She wondered where Arthur was, and while she was scanning the rocks along the water, hunting for him, he stepped out from
beneath the tree behind her. She smiled to see him, and when he put his arm around her waist, she rested her head on his shoulder.
They stood on their dune while the grass whipped at their legs. They stood and held each other. It was the most natural thing
in the world to kiss, once, and twice, and then he pressed his lips to her temple.
“Can you stay?” he asked.
She put her head on his shoulder once more and stood with him at the very edge of the firelight and listened to the sweet
boom of the surf and her friends laughing on the beach below, and she thought it over.