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.
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.
Part Four
Tomorrow
Thirty-One
The boxes are right where she left them, stacked up like toy blocks across the living room floor. Some open, some still sealed, many of them labeled in Birdie’s handwriting.Baby years—Don’t Toss! Elementary—Art Projects! Journals & Notebooks—Important!Reminders—some big, some small—of all the different people her daughter ever was.
After a long day of driving, Grace gives herself time to settle before she rushes back into anything. She makes a few trips out to the Jeep, careful not to lift too much at once, and sets her belongings just inside the front door.
Upstairs in her bedroom, she drops her duffel bag onto the bed and begins to unpack. The last of the beach still clings to her clothing—grains of sand spilling onto the comforter and into the rug. When everything’s sorted, she showers. For a long time, she stands under the water and inhales the steam. She scrubs away the salt and peeling, sunburned skin, lets it all swirl down the drain. When she’s finished, after she slips on some comfortable clothes, she sifts through the linen closet, takes out some medical supplies, and properly bandages her foot so the wound she’s carried with her all week can finally start to heal.
When she’s done, Grace steps into her office. Of course, the room hasn’t changed. It’s as cluttered as ever. Crumpled notes. Abandoned plans. Neglected planters filled with plants that have long since gone dry. Grace pulls in a deep inhalation, filling herself with breath, findsthe wastebasket, and starts to purge. Balled sticky notes. Her scribbled-up planner. The piles of crispy leaves. From the bathroom, she grabs some cleaning wipes and a cup of water. She gathers the ceramic pots and pours a little liquid into each one, just in case there’s any hope in the dried-up stems coming back to life. When the desk surface is tidy, she wipes it all down, then reaches for the gold frame—the image of her and Birdie at the top of the dune, suspended together in a moment—and sets it on the corner of her workspace. Then, quietly, she sets down her laptop and plugs it in so that it’s ready for her, whenever that day comes again when she needs it.
Back downstairs, she pulls some provisions from the pantry and makes herself something simple, but whole, to eat. She carries her plate into the living room, turns on the TV. For a moment, she clicks until she lands on her mother’s favorite station. She watches it for a couple of minutes while she takes a few bites of her meal. And then, finally, not wanting to put it off any longer, Grace begins.
Item by item, she puts it all away. One thing at a time. The Magic 8 Ball. The folded-up notes from Jenny. Her old retainer. The rolled-up posters. The floppy disks. Every last thing: the remnants of a girl—girls—her mother once loved so fiercely she couldn’t bear to throw any part of her—not a single memory—away.
Before she closes the boxes, Grace adds a few additions of her own—all the small things she’s accumulated and saved herself these last few days: The sand dollar. The arcade tickets. The paper bracelet. The highlighter. The chunky necklace. The coupon for Madame Mermaid. The two nearly identical silver rings. And then, finally, the gold nameplate. The one she thought she had lost but that was always waiting for her, right there beneath the surface.
The moment she adds it in, Grace hears it.
A tapping. So soft at first that she assumes she must be imagining things. Grace reaches for the remote and mutes the television, though the sound remains, soft but present. She looks up and sees it. There, at the window, watching her pack up these final pieces of her past.
Tap, tap, tap.
Its orange beak pecks the glass.
Grace stands and crosses the room slowly, careful not to startle it and scare it off. The bird doesn’t move, just remains perched on its branch, a beautiful burst of red set against a backdrop of green leaves.
Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s just a bird. Either way, right now, Grace is glad it’s there.
Her elbows propped on the top of one of the teetering cardboard stacks, she stays and studies it until eventually, it flaps its wings and is gone. Once it disappears into the sky, Grace turns back to the couch, her elbow accidentally knocking a pile of loose papers off one of the boxes in the process. They flutter, then scatter onto the floor. She kneels, gathering everything—an old high school talent-show flyer, a marked-up math test from junior year, a playbill from a small Bucks County theater production. She’s halfway through the pile when her fingers land on the envelope, just another memory among many. She nearly shuffles past it, tucks it in with everything else, until she turns it over and sees that it’s still sealed.
Back on the couch, Grace peels it open and discovers an old greeting card inside. The front is faded, yet still bright, a swirl of colorful flowers framing a glittery number sixteen. Somehow, despite the years that have passed, the paper carries a hint of her mother’s perfume. With great care, she opens it and finds Birdie’s penmanship marking both sides. A letter. Or a wish. One final note for her daughter before she officially moved into the new year ahead.
