The hours refuse to speed up and pass. Grace attempts to eat—cereal, leftover candy, nothing with actual substance—but her stomach is toomuch of a mess. She sits at the kitchen table, then tries and fails to process all that’s transpired these last few hours in her journal, though none of her thoughts come out right. By the time it’s dark, she clicks on the television and watches one of Birdie’s Hallmark movies all the way through.
Nothing helps.
The feeling inside her, it isn’t just grief anymore.
Grief implies a deep feeling of sorrow over something you’ve lost—something that, despite all your longing and bargaining and wishing, you can’t ever get back. A piece of your past that’s gone forever. A picture of your future that won’t come to be. What happened this evening out on the steps was something different—having something, someone, she thought she’d lost turn up out of nowhere and make her question everything all over again.
Now it’s the middle of the night. The credits for another movie roll across the screen, the next one already queued up behind it—another charming story where everything works itself out.
Grace mutes the TV but doesn’t turn it off. The glow feels comforting. For a few minutes, she watches it without any sound and thinks about Adam, his comments about her creative work, his dream, that first season they spent together and the many seasons that came after it, all of which landed them here.
Grace looks at the items she’s collected this week, laid out on the coffee table. The sand dollar. The arcade tickets. The paper bracelet. The chunky necklace. The highlighter. Her copy ofThe Tides, the cover curled back. The unopened bakery box sits next to it.
Slowly, she peels back the lid. Inside is a perfect pink confection, just like the ones she and Adam enjoyed together the first birthday of hers they were together. The night of her actual birthday, they celebrated with Birdie in Sea Drift—blue crabs on the patio, swirl cones on the boardwalk. The following week, Adam planned a fancier evening. Dinner in the city. A champagne toast. Cupcakes at some of-the-moment bakery. Cocktails and dancing with friends.
It hits Grace now. All of it. Their past, cut short. Their future, potentially still ahead. Not knowing if she’s meant to go forward or backward. If she should begin again or let it all go.
Grace tosses down the cupcake box and runs toward the bathroom, her hand pressed against her mouth until she makes it inside, all the feelings she’s been processing but unable to put into words finally finding a way to come out.
She gargles and splashes cold water on her face, her body empty of nearly everything. From the living room, she grabs her phone, too tired to click off the TV, then heads to bed.
Before she shuts her eyes, Grace taps her device to life, then opens her message screen.
I changed my mind,she types.I need you. At the beach house. I don’t want to be alone.
She doesn’t wait to see if the signal catches.
Grace is dreaming by the time the message finally goes through.
Part Three
Now
Twenty-Two
Wednesday
Grace wakes to the smell of something warm and sweet.
For a minute, her eyes still closed, she thinks she’s dreaming. Imagining. That she’s remembering all those summers of her childhood, when Birdie would rise early, get started on preparing a delicious breakfast, never wanting to waste one vacation minute. Her lids blink open. Sunlight filters into the bedroom at slanted angles. The scent becomes stronger. Vanilla, maybe. Something cakey. A cabinet slams shut, followed by clattering. A pan sizzling. She pulls herself upright, realizes her senses aren’t caught in a memory. They’re experiencing these things now.
“Good morning, birthday girl,” a woman’s voice announces when Grace pads down the hallway in her pajamas, her heel still raw from her sand-scraped walk back from the dune. “I burned a few because this pan is absolutely garbage—half the Teflon’s scratched off.” She turns, offers a conspiratorial smile. “Also, I’m guessing people don’t lock their front doors in Sea Drift?” Her head tilts as her eyes narrow with curiosity. “Why are you limping?”
Jenny.
Grace rubs away some remaining sleep and fully takes in the scene. A plate of bacon cools on the counter. Two glasses of juice are already poured. A colorful gift bag stuffed with bright tissue sits on the tablebeside Caleb’s welcome basket. The house, which had been practically silent all week, newly full of life.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” Grace asks, ignoring Jenny’s question and instead choosing to look around the room for more clues. “What time is it?”
Jenny, dressed in chino shorts, a PTA T-shirt, and a purple party hat, glances at her watch, the one she uses for every imaginable thing—scheduling playdates, counting her steps, probably navigating her way down here and figuring out how to fix things. “A little after ten.” She flips a pancake. “At this point, we’ll consider this brunch.”
With a wave of her spatula, Jenny instructs Grace to sit, then brings her one of the home’s old blue cups and a piled-high plate. Grace, still feeling woozy, takes a seat. The pancakes, like always, look perfect. Golden. Fluffy. She picks a crispy bit off one of the edges, nibbles it.
“Also, I take it you’ve been on a hunger strike since you got down here?” Jenny slides bacon onto Grace’s plate. “The cabinets are basically barren. You didn’t even have cooking spray.” She leans down, kisses the top of Grace’s head. “I’ve already been to that cute but sort of hodgepodge market down the street twice.” She moves back toward the stove. “In case you were wondering, they stock every variety of Popsicle known to man, but not a single piece of bread.”
Grace takes another small bite—cautious in case her body doesn’t react the right way—thinking back to last night and the text she sent before she fell asleep.
“I didn’t think you’d come so fast,” she admits, cautiously swallowing. “I figured you’d call me when you woke up, maybe we’d come up with a plan.”
