I drop to my knees.
Eleven years.
Eleven fucking years since my toes last sank into sand.
I grab fistfuls of it—wet, cold, perfect—and toss it into the air like confetti.
“Merci!” I yell to no one in particular. “Merci beaucoup!”
The words break from me like laughter and tears rolled into one. Freedom tastes like salt. Like rain.
I turn toward the old man, crawling up the slope of drier sand as my legs shake beneath me.
“You’re welcome, son.” He smiles over his shoulder, hauling a few remaining items from his boat. “Next time, don’t be so damn stupid as to swim at night. It’s dangerous. You’re lucky I spotted you. And never—ever—swim without a life jacket.”
“I won’t, sir,” I promise, still breathless, still half-dazed from everything I’ve just survived.
The air smells different here—damp, earthy, real.
I risk another glance over my shoulder.
The yacht looms like a ghost in the distance, bobbing in the restless dark. Police lights flash faintly from the dock, red and blue bleeding across the water. Radio static cuts through the sound of waves, voices overlapping in French and English.
And there?—
My mother.
She stands beside them, her long skirt whipping in the wind. It’s too dark to tell if she’s handcuffed.
But I know she is.
And even from this distance, I swear I can feel her eyes on me.
“Here you go, son. You don’t want to forget this.”
My attention snaps back to the present just in time to see the old man extend the worn leather-bound book toward me.
My mother’s Bible.
I barely have time to react before I trip over my own feet and land flat on my ass in the sand.
“Some power that book has, huh?” he says with a crooked smile.
For once, I’m speechless.
Totally and utterly speechless.
I scramble to my feet, brushing sand from my clothes with trembling hands, eyes fixed on the Bible, now soaking wet, and cradled in my palms like something fragile.
I’d forgotten all about it.
Somehow.
The last thing I remember was tucking it under my arm as my mother shoved me toward the hallway, toward freedom, toward whatever life waited beyond the rain.
And yet—it’s here.
Still with me.
