Thirty
Saturday
It’s time.
Although it’s early, the sun not yet even fully up, Grace is awake.
Showered. Dressed. The trash tied up. The bed linens stripped.
Caleb’s beach towel, which she forgot to give back, neatly folded on the kitchen table.
Her bag’s already packed and in the Jeep.
Once again, just like when she first stepped inside here one week ago, the house is still.
After seeing Ray at the cinema yesterday, Grace returned here, quietly began to close things up, then spent the rest of the day out back in one of the Adirondack chairs. She didn’t read. Didn’t write. Didn’t do anything productive.
Instead, she just let herself sit and think.
About her mother and their memories here together.
About the strange tenderness of being known so intimately by a place.
About how, now and again, a setting can come to remember you in ways you forgot to remember yourself.
The versions you loved. The versions you lost. The versions you’re only now learning to forgive.
She thought about how some people—if you’re lucky—can see you that way, too. Not as chapters, but as a whole story with twists and turns and messy parts you’ve at times wished you could rewrite.
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How sometimes you had to go backward in order to go forward again. And how, on other occasions, life hands you circumstances that force you to go forward alone.
How the ones we love—the people who shape us—don’t really vanish when they go. Not really. Instead, they turn into stars—distant and quiet and impossible to reach—but always there and still lighting the way.
Now Grace locks the house for quite possibly the last time in her life. She heads around back and leaves the key beneath the bottle of strawberry shampoo. Then, in the dim light of early morning, she walks slowly up the empty street and in the direction of the dune.
Before she leaves, she knows there’s one thing left for her to do.
The beach is quiet. Hazy. Empty. The breeze cool with lingering hints of night.
Like always, Grace kicks off her shoes, then walks down the dune’s incline.
The cool grains shift beneath her bare feet.
All around her, the grasses whisper a quiet lullaby.
She makes her way past the vacant lifeguard stands and across the wide stretch of sand.
She moves toward the water, as still as a canvas.
Above it, the sky is a muted palette. Blots of gray.
Hints of lavender. The first precocious webs of yellow and peach.
The magic hour.
That pocket of time when the world quiets and everything feels like a dream.
Which is what Grace tells herself is happening when the haze starts to clear down by the water and she sees her.
Sitting just past the slope, not far from where the gentle ebb of waves hits.
A woman in a classic one-piece, a breezy cover-up, and a straw bucket hat.
A chubby toddler runs in circles at her side.
Grace takes a cautious step toward her, remembering what Cece said the last time they saw one another the other night.
That it was 267time for Grace to stop thinking about the past and to instead begin to consider the next version of herself, the one who comes after all this.
She touches the lower part of her stomach, assuming that’s what this is.
Not the girl she was at sixteen or nineteen or twenty-two, but the woman she’s on the cusp of becoming.
Until the person in front of Grace turns around.
It takes her a minute for the details to assemble themselves in her mind.
The way her shoulder-length hair that hangs from beneath her hat seems blond from a distance, but gray when the hints of sunlight peering through the clouds hit it just right.
The way she holds her posture, strong and confident so that she can comfortably balance the weight of her loss on it.
The hint of red still staining her lips even though she washed her makeup off the night before at bedtime.
Birdie.
Not as she was when Grace lost her. But as she was a long time ago.
“Oh, don’t even look at me,” she calls out and wipes her bottom lashes.
Her face is the same, but younger, smoother, the skin taut with youth.
And yet, still remarkably, impossibly, hers.
“I thought I was alone down here. You’re probably best to keep walking.
The lifeguards ought to stab a bunch of warning flags around me when they arrive. I’m a mess.”
“I-it’s okay.” Grace moves a little closer, her breath caught inside her throat. “To be honest,” she continues, her fingers shaking, “I’m kind of a mess these days, too.”
Birdie scooches over by a few inches, not because there’s no space, but more as an invitation for this stranger who’s appeared behind her to come sit.
Grace lowers herself into the sand and stretches out her legs, her sight no longer cast on the water, but rather on the two people—the woman and her child—to her right.
“Sorry about all the crying,” Birdie says, still dabbing the tears away like they’re nothing, and not every feeling inside her.
“You’re supposed to be happy when you’re at the beach.
” When she says this, she gestures at the setting as if to say, Just look at this place.
“Unfortunately for me, 268our time down here this week hasn’t just been a vacation.
” Her hair catches the breeze and billows across her shoulders.
“For me, it’s also been a time to grieve. ”
Beside them, the toddler—the youngest version of Cece that Grace has had the opportunity to see this week—digs for shells, clapping each time she discovers something new.
“Her father died,” Birdie states and looks at the girl. “My husband. This winter.” She turns back to the water. “A patch of black ice on the highway, and just like that, he was gone.”
It’s a version of her mother Grace never had the opportunity to see. At least not in any way she’d recall. Broken. Scared. Mourning not only her lost love but also the person she was when she was with him and the future she once imagined they’d build.
Grace’s mind floods with questions she wants to ask her. How are you here? What am I supposed to do? Before she can pose any of them, Birdie starts to talk again.
“We came here for our honeymoon,” she says and waves a hand at the air.
“It was several years ago.” She laughs at some private memory.
“We had the best time. The two of us were like fish. Every afternoon when we finally pulled ourselves out of the ocean, our fingers were all wrinkled up, like we were kids.” Birdie pulls in a big breath and then another, like she’s been deflated and is trying to fill herself back up.
“We promised each other before we left that if we ever had a child, the minute we had enough money saved up, we’d bring her here for a happy family vacation.
” With this comment, Birdie flips her hands up toward the sky.
“So here we are. Me and my girl. Only without him.”
Grace was so young when James died. Other than stories her mother shared and a few framed photos around the house, she had no real memory of him.
In turn, she had no real memory of her mother this way, either—alone, her grief still so raw, crying to a stranger on the beach.
She only knew her as the strong, independent, and fearless widow she ultimately became.
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“She’s so little.” Birdie swallows hard, trying to keep her voice steady.
“She’ll never remember him.” Her eyes close briefly.
“I’m so worried for her,” Birdie says. “And if I’m honest, for me, too.
” She casts her sight down on the sand. “A single mother,” she says through a heavy sigh, like she’s just realizing what the words mean.
“This wasn’t the plan. Not at all.” She pinches the bridge of her nose, but the tears fall anyway. “I’m so terrified I won’t be enough.”
“You will be.” Grace chokes up at this unexpected symmetry. “You’ll be so much more than that.”
Birdie slowly lifts her chin. “Thank you.” Tears track down her cheeks.
“Sometimes it helps just hearing that.” Just as she says this, the toddler waddles over and gifts her mother with a gray clamshell, then plants a kiss on her cheek.
“My girl. Always discovering something beautiful.” Birdie clutches the shell tight in her palm. “It’s perfect, love.”
Above them, the sun pierces through the clouds, casting pockets of glitter on the water.
“Want to hear something very silly?” Birdie asks and turns to look at Grace. “Today’s our last day here, and I haven’t been out in the ocean once for a swim.”
“You should go,” Grace says, still in disbelief over what’s happening, and yet impossibly calm. “Before you leave.”
Birdie thumbs the shell. “Not this year.” She looks over at her daughter, who’s resumed her treasure hunt. “She’s too little. She’ll get scared if I bring her with me and go out too far.”
The realization settles on Grace like warm rays of light.
“I’ll take care of her for you,” Grace says. “I promise. I’ll sit right here. I won’t move.”
Birdie’s eyes narrow in contemplation. She looks at Grace, then at the child, and then at Grace again—not having any way of knowing that she’s looking at the same person. “Okay,” she agrees, brushing some sand off her slender calves. “Maybe just for a quick dip.”
She stands, kisses her daughter, then removes her timeless cover-up and her hat and sets them both down.
When she reaches the water, 270she makes sure to look back to ensure all is okay back on the shoreline before she proceeds.
Slowly, she steps in. The water rises past her ankles.
Then her knees. Then her hips. She takes another look at them, then dips beneath the surface.
A long moment passes before she pops back up, her whole body wet and cool and healthy.
“It’s wonderful!” she shouts and waves an arm. A smile spreads across her face. “I’ll just be one more minute.”
While Birdie swims, the child moves closer and passes over another find: a petite purple-tinged scallop shell.
Once she gifts it to Grace, she sidles up and, with no real hesitation or restraint, takes a seat on her lap.
For a moment that feels like it both lasts forever and not nearly long enough, Grace holds her as together they watch Birdie float and indulge in a temporary feeling of peace.
“We’ll be okay,” Grace whispers into the child’s ear. “Me. You. Her.” More daylight begins to break through the haze. “We’re all going to be all right.”
A few minutes later, Birdie dips again and then swims back to shore.
She stands in the shallow surf for a moment, allowing the gentle swells to make contact with her legs.
A look of contentment on her face, she bends and scoops her hand through the water, picking up a palmful of finds.
From her place on the beach, Grace watches her sift through her discoveries.
“Huh,” Birdie says, her silver hair wet against her neck. “Look at this.”
At first, Grace squints, certain she’s not seeing things right. But as Birdie steps out of the water and back onto the sand, any sense of doubt fades away.
The necklace dangles from Birdie’s fingers, as if they’d always held it.
“Someone must have lost it while they were out there.” She draws closer, the glint of metal unmistakable. “Lucky I found it.” Her skin dripping with beads of water, Birdie holds it out for Grace to see. “Cece.” She taps the delicate pendant. “What an adorable name.”
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Before Grace can react, the child—so happy to see that her mother is back—stands and runs into Birdie’s arms. She lifts her up, quickly twirls her around.
“Thank you so much for watching her.” Birdie sets the girl back down and then reaches for her belongings. “Getting to go out there like that lifted me up in ways I can’t describe.”
“Of course,” Grace states, not wanting this moment to end but knowing deep down that it must. “Don’t even think about it.”
Birdie nods her appreciation. She slides on her hat, then her cover-up, the fabric clinging to her wet swimsuit.
“I guess it’s time for us to get going,” she says. “Me and the little one still have a long drive.” She takes the child by her hand. “I’m going to leave the necklace up on one of the fence posts at the top of the dune, just in case someone comes looking for it.”
The hard thing about life is that no matter how bad you want to, you can never stop time. You can’t live inside a moment. Try as you might, you can’t bend and stretch the hours or minutes. All you can do is be in it. Appreciate it. Knowing it means even more because of the fact that it will pass.
“Maybe I’ll see you here again next year,” Birdie says. “I think this might be our new tradition.” She looks down at her daughter with all the love in the world. “The two of us. A few days down here every summer. A chance to step away from some of the other stuff I have to deal with back home.”
“I’ll look for you,” Grace says, realizing then that tears have begun to fill her eyes.
“Well, in that case, I suppose this isn’t goodbye.” Birdie smiles again—warm and bright and comforting. “I’ll be sure to look for you, too.”
With that, Birdie and Cece—who isn’t quite Cece just yet—begin to walk up the sand.
Grace twists her body and watches them, not sure where they’re heading but knowing it’s not her job to follow them.
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That wherever it is they’re going, they’ll be fine.
That goodbye doesn’t always mean forever.
That no matter how you change, or life changes, one thing is always certain.
The months slip away.
New days start. Hard ones end.
Eventually, despite everything, summer—beautiful summer—always comes again.