1
Laurie
Laurie opened her eyes to a golden sunbeam streaming through the window, just as she had every morning of her childhood.
Dust motes drifted lazily in the morning light. Her eight-year-old daughter slept pressed against her, curled between her back and the wall.
For a moment, in that familiar room with her daughter breathing peacefully beside her, Laurie felt perfectly content.
Then she remembered.
The events of the previous day came rushing back – and with them, the terrible fear that squeezed her lungs and made it difficult to breathe.
Chris had finally snapped. The circle of coercive control that Laurie had been trapped in for years had drawn tight as a noose. And finally, after years of waiting and wavering, she’d left.
Her mind spun with all of the worries that she would have to confront in the coming days, all the endless tasks requiredto restart a life. Finances and a change of school and a home of their own… but they were all small worries compared to the pervasive fear of how her husband might retaliate when she filed for divorce.
Laurie rolled out of bed, desperate to regain that feeling of tranquility that had been a holdover from her peaceful dreams. She wanted to hold onto it just a bit longer. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so safe and content.
But the feeling was gone. It had evaporated like a light morning fog.
She walked to the window, still working to keep the worst of her thoughts and anxieties at bay. Just breathing normally felt like a herculean task; her lungs refused to expand far enough to accommodate a deep breath in.
The Pacific Ocean sprawled out before her, vast and sparkling. It was early morning, and the sun hung low over the horizon, but already the Hawaiian summer day was shining bright. A fresh breeze drifted in through the windowscreen, carrying the scent of salt and sun-warmed stone.
It was a truly astonishing view, but Laurie felt numb to it all.
They were only halfway through the year, and already it was the worst year of her life. They’d lost their dad just a few months before. He had been the rock of their family, and they were all lost without him.
Being in her childhood room, knowing that he wasn’t there, that she would never see him again, was excruciating. Even months later.
With Kimo gone, the huge house felt cavernous and empty.
Laurie shivered in the cool morning air; the sun streaming in through the window wasn’t enough to warm her. She left the room carefully, closing the door with extreme caution so that she wouldn’t wake her daughter, and then she tiptoed down the stairs in her bare feet.
A stranger stood in the kitchen, and Laurie startled so badly that her feet left the floor.
It took her stressed, sleep-slow brain a moment to remember that Anne had filled the spare rooms with tourists. Now there was a strange man standing in the kitchen, and Laurie’s throat burned with the sudden urge to cry.
The man’s expression turned apologetic, and he said something that Laurie didn’t catch. She hadn’t grabbed her hearing aids, and she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to try to read a stranger’s lips in silence.
She gave him a wide berth on her way to the back door.
The air inside the house was cool, but out in the sunshine, the day was already warm.
There wasn’t another person in sight, not another living thing save the dark green plants that bobbed slightly in the breeze.
Laurie took comfort in the fact that the house behind her was full of family.
She sat on the back steps and lifted her face to the sun, letting it warm her, and tried not to think about anything at all. That didn’t come easily to a brain like hers, which was always full of words and worries, but sometimes out in nature she could quiet her mind for a while.
There was something uniquely soothing in the salt air, and the morning sunshine on her skin was life-giving.
The boards beneath her vibrated; Laurie jumped and looked over her shoulder.
Her adoptive mother walked toward her with two steaming mugs. The kitchen door swung shut behind her.
Dawn’s hair had been cropped into a silver pixie cut, and summer days outside had restored a healthy color to her face. Her blue eyes were bright and perceptive. After months of overwhelming grief, she finally looked more like herself.
