Chapter 7
Seven
The beach is breathtaking. Wide. Endless. Almost too perfect to be real.
Grace pauses at the top of the dune and takes it in.
The ocean is a brilliant shade of blue green, so clear it could be mistaken for glass.
Beyond it, the horizon line sits, as bold and crisp as an artist’s brushstroke.
Up and down the shoreline, white lifeguard stands dot the sand—silent, steady reminders that even in her absence, someone has been here watching over this place.
She closes her eyes. For an instant, Grace just listens.
The hush of the waves. Distant laughter.
The whisper of dune grass. The melody of it all, once memorized, now almost forgotten.
Exhaling slowly, she kicks off her flip-flops, leaving them behind with the other scattered sandals—one of the many unspoken rules of this setting.
She tromps down the dune, the hot grains sliding beneath her every step.
It’s late in the day, a little before five o’clock.
The air is thick with heat but beginning to slip into that soft, golden-hour cool.
The magic hours.
Birdie’s favorite times of day here, just before sunrise and sunset, when the sky softens into muted pastels, the world quiets, and everything feels like a dream.
Grace navigates toward the water, hauling an old chair she dragged out from the house’s shed.
She sees the beach is changing hands, like stepping into a restaurant between shifts.
Families are packing up. Shaking out towels.
Rinsing off toys. Stuffing food back 56into coolers.
Brushing sand away from sticky legs. They’re all preparing for the inevitable transition from day to night.
Soon, the lifeguards will pull their warning flags, leaving this place ruleless.
That’s when it belongs to the stragglers—the ones who linger to watch the sun melt into the water, to swim out too far, to set up fishing poles in the fading light.
And then, there are those like Grace. The people who’ve come to sit at the edge of the world and just think.
Down by the coastline, tide pools shimmer.
Sea Drift is known for them. At certain times of day, the ocean folds in on itself, creating vast sandbars and shallow playgrounds.
Grace settles by one. It’s only a few inches deep before it gives way to the open sea.
She wrestles the chair open—its metal rusted from saltwater and time—then sinks into it.
Her toes press into the damp sand. She drags her fingers through the wet grains.
And then, not sure what she expects to happen, she stares out at the scene before her, takes a breath, and waits.
“Hey!” a voice calls out behind Grace, yanking her from a deep, dreamy sleep, the sort that makes you forget where you are. “You okay out there?”
Grace’s head jerks up. Her eyes fly open.
She gasps. Panic—instant and disorienting—pricks at her newly sunburned skin.
Her pulse spikes. How long has she been asleep?
Ten minutes? Two hours? She blinks and the scene sharpens.
Wide-open ocean. Everywhere. No, no, no.
Her stomach lurches. The water, previously lapping at her feet, swirls halfway up her calves.
“Oh my God,” she stammers and scrambles upright, spinning to look back at the coast.
The beach, which had been directly behind Grace when she sat, is several yards away, separated by a pool of deep water.
She scans left to right—oh no—her heart its own percussion instrument as she realizes 57she’s stranded.
Alone. On an increasingly narrow stretch of sandbar. Her own private island.
“The tides shifted,” the voice yells out, as if Grace can’t see this most obvious fact.
Back on the shore, the lifeguard stands are empty, the beach mostly deserted. There’s only one man beside a fishing pole dug into the sand. He waves. And laughs. Not a restrained chuckle. A full body chortle. The kind that makes you hunch over and slap a knee.
“So I see!” Grace shouts back.
The man pulls himself upright, looking entertained. “Are you all right out there?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m okay!” Grace calls back, hoping to sound like a competent adult and not a woman who just marooned herself in the ocean.
She eyes the distance between the shoreline and where she stands, gauging if she ought to abandon her chair, try swimming back with it, or possibly sink into the sea and disappear.
“I think!” she adds, mostly for her own benefit.
“Hang on!” He steps away from his tackle box, pulls off his T-shirt, and wades into the water. “Let me give you a hand!”
“O-oh, you don’t have to do . . .”
Before Grace can completely object, he dips beneath the surface.
“Guess you were having a pretty good dream,” he states through an amused grin a moment later as he steps onto the sandbar.
“I’m mortified,” Grace admits.
“Don’t be.” Tiny droplets of water glint on his tanned shoulders. “You’re not the first person I’ve watched get stuck out here.” He laughs. Two shallow dimples form in his cheeks. “Last week, a mom dozed off with a toddler asleep on her chest.”
“Well, that’s . . . comforting?” Grace shrugs, her shoulders pink and burning. “At least it’s not only me.”
“Pretty soon I may have to start charging,” he jokes. “Here.” He reaches for the chair and forces it closed. “Let me take that.”
58
“Thank you.” Grace squeezes water from the bottom of her cover-up. “I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem.” He hoists the chair under his arm. “You can swim, right?” he asks, walking to the edge of the sandbar. “I had to prop the toddler up on my shoulders.”
Grace snorts. “I think I’ll manage.”
“If you say so,” he says, already knee-deep in the surf. “Fair warning that my prices go up with a client’s age.” He dunks under, then reemerges, his head bobbing like a buoy. “If you change your mind, be sure to splash around and give me a sign that you need help, all right?”
Back on the shore, he tosses her a dry towel from his pile of belongings.
He takes one for himself, twisting it around his waist, then slides his T-shirt back on.
Grace tugs off her drenched cover-up—which, in her frazzled state, she foolishly kept on for her swim—and quickly wraps herself up so she’ll feel less exposed.
“Beer?” he asks, reaching down into a soft-sided cooler bag.
“Oh, um.” Grace hesitates, like a teenager at a beach party, though doing so is ridiculous.
She’s been legally allowed to drink for almost two decades.
Still, her brain does the old mental tally.
Caffeine. Alcohol. Sushi. All the things she trained herself to limit, carefully ration out, and avoid, just in case.
A habit that outlived the dream. One that outlived her marriage, too. “Sure.”
“No pressure.” He raises an eyebrow. “I have waters if you’d rather—”
“N-no, I’ll take one. A beer sounds good right now, honestly.” She looks out at the ocean. The water where she’d been sitting is significantly deeper than it was moments ago. “I think after that public display of humiliation, I earned it.”
“Agreed.” He passes her an ice-cold can. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” She enjoys a long, carbonated sip, the first she’s had in ages. “I’m Grace, by the way. You know, in case you need that information for your rescue log.”
“Caleb. Good to meet you.”
59
“Wait.” The puzzle pieces click into place. “Caleb.” Her thoughts flip back to yesterday. The easy charm. The way he helped convince her to come here in the first place. “From the rental agency?”
“That’s me.” He squints as a thought assembles in his mind. “Oh, hang on. Grace.” He nods toward the dune. “Number 116, right?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Boy.” He laughs. “You really haven’t been down here in a while, huh?” He enjoys another sip. “Seeing as you forgot how fast those tide pools can disappear.”
“Trust me.” She sets her can down in the sand. “I will be reliving—and cringing at—that little mishap for the rest of my life.” Grace finger-combs her wet hair. “Dare I ask how long I was asleep out there?”
“I’d say I stood here and laughed for a solid half hour.” Caleb grins. “Maybe more.”
She covers her face with a hand.
“Don’t worry.” He smirks. “I wouldn’t have let you get washed away out there.”
A breeze blows off the water, sending goose bumps across Grace’s skin. “So do you live down here or something?”
“Unfortunately for me, I live inland and go back and forth a lot for work. Bridge traffic’s a real treat.
” His fishing rod curves, the line tightening.
“My folks own the agency. I’ve been helping them out the last few months, though I haven’t made any big moves to make this my permanent zip code yet.
” He winds the spool. “This week, though, I’m a renter, same as you.
” With a tug, his line emerges from the darkening water.
“I’m the pink house on the dune.” He narrows his eyes, investigating the bare hook as it swoops over the sand.
“Lucky me. Looks like I caught another ghost fish.”
Grace laughs, takes a fast peek around. The sky is changing, the light settling into dusk. “Well, thanks for the help.” She pulls away her towel, prepared to fold it up and pass it back.
“Don’t be silly.” Caleb stops her. “Hang on to it.”
“Are you sure?”
60
“I know where you’re staying.” His smile lingers. “I suspect we’ll cross paths again.”
Grateful not to walk back in her bikini, Grace drapes herself up in the warm terrycloth, then squeezes dampness from her hair. As she does, her hands absently trail past her ear, down her neck, and—
She freezes. Then gasps. “Oh no.”
Frantic, her fingers fly to her throat. No, no.
She pats her bare collarbone, willing it to be there.
Hoping she missed it. Please. Please. But it isn’t.
A sharp, sick panic swells inside her, tightening like a clenched fist in her core.
Her necklace. Birdie’s birthday gift to Grace when she was a teenager.
Her name, shaped in delicate gold. The nameplate she almost never took off.
She presses her chest harder, as if she’s able to will it to return. But it’s too late. It’s already gone.
“What?” Caleb releases his fishing line, instantly back in rescue mode. “What is it?”
“My necklace.” Her stomach plummets as if she might get sick.
“I lost it!” She drops to her knees and sifts through the sand, desperate for a quick glint of metal.
“I can’t believe this!” Grace smacks at her sternum, like she’s mistaken things, as if maybe she’s imagined it.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come here.” Her fingers continue to pat her salt-marked skin, the space achingly empty, as though an actual piece of her body has been taken.
“I should have listened to my gut and stayed home.” Emotion burns her throat. “This trip. I knew it was a mistake.”
“It’s okay.” Caleb, fueled by a new sense of urgency, crouches next to her. “We’ll find it.”
But there’s nothing.
After a few more frantic minutes, Grace officially calls off the search.
“You’re sure you had it on when you walked down here?” Caleb asks, still looking.
“I’m certain. I almost never take it off.” Tears cling to her bottom lashes. “I must have lost it out there.” She looks at the place that was 61previously a sandbar, the water now nothing but rolling waves. “And if that’s the case—which I’m sure it is—I’ll never find it.”
Caleb continues to dig. “I’m assuming it was something special?”
Grace bites her lip to stop it from quivering. “It wasn’t expensive, if that’s what you mean,” she explains, trying not to cry. “I-I’ve just had it forever. It was important to me.”
Caleb stands, claps sand from his hands. “You’ll find it,” he states, like it’s a fact.
“Thanks.” Grace sighs, already accepting that it’s gone for good. “But I doubt it.”
“You’d be surprised.” Caleb’s tone, previously playful, softens. “A few summers ago, I lost a pair of brand-new sunglasses out there. Three days later, they washed right up at my feet.”
“That’s not a real story.”
“It sure is,” Caleb insists.
Grace turns to him, her brows arching in question. “Really?”
“Really,” he confirms, and nods to prove that he means it.
“Sea Drift is funny that way.” He lifts his chin by a degree.
When he does, their eyes meet in the dimming light.
“There’s something about this place,” he adds, a sense of wistfulness in his tone.
“For whatever reason, things on this island don’t tend to stay lost for very long. ”