After lunch, they packed up her blanket and the picnic supplies and decided to walk around the point to take advantage of low tide and walk to Sea Glass Beach.
He took her backpack from her, much to her disgruntlement, and they made their way around the rocks to the beach.
As soon as they rounded the point, the beach came into view, stretched out like a glittering tapestry. Sunlight danced across the colorful fragments, transforming the coastline into a kaleidoscope of blues, greens and the occasional flash of amber.
“It’s magic! Like mermaid jewels,” Olive exclaimed.
“It is,” her mother agreed.
“I know we can find some purple glass for Grandma here.”
“We might, but if we do, we can’t take it home,” Emma told her in an apologetic tone.
“Why not? Grandma said we’re supposed to take the sea glass off the beach if we find it.”
“See that sign?” Emma says. “It tells people not to remove the sea glass from this particular beach. If you find it on other beaches, like the one by Grandma’s house, you can take all you want because it’s not a natural part of the shore. It’s only there because of people throwing trash in the ocean. But here, all the different colors of sea glass are what makes it so beautiful.”
“There’s a bazillion pieces of glass. I can take one, can’t I?”
“If everybody who came here took some of the sea glass away, soon there wouldn’t be any left for other people to enjoy,” Bryce said.
She gave a pouty expression but seemed to understand.
“Let me take your picture,” Emma said, pulling out her phone.
Bryce reached for his phone as well to capture this memory, the two dogs cavorting above the high water line, where they couldn’t hurt their paws on any jagged edges of glass, and these two people who had come to mean so much to him.
He knew he would treasure these memories forever.
As they walked along the shore, Bryce found himself lost in thought. Each piece of sea glass told a story of the ocean’s patient polish. He bent down to pick up a deep cobalt piece, holding it up to the light. The edges, once sharp and dangerous, had been smoothed by time and tide into something beautiful.
Like the glass, Emma had been tossed by life’s turbulent waves, weathered by storms of heartbreak and loss. Yet here she stood, not broken, but transformed. The harsh edges of her past had been softened, leaving behind a woman of remarkable strength and beauty.
Her infectious laughter, mingling with Olive’s giggles, rang out across the beach. Bryce marveled at how she had emerged from her trials somehow polished into something even more beautiful.
The thought filled him with a profound tenderness and a surge of protectiveness. He vowed silently to be the shore for her, a safe haven against whatever waves might come. Even if she didn’t want him to be that yet.
“We should probably head back,” she said after they hadwandered the beach for nearly an hour. “The tide’s going to start coming back in. I would hate to be trapped here.”
Bryce would love to prolong the rest of this day, though he understood she would worry about her daughter being in the sun for too long and exposed to the elements.
He gathered the dogs’ leashes and they made their way back around the point, scrambling over rocks.
Olive was tired, he could see, so Bryce handed the leashes to Emma, then picked Olive up to give her a piggyback ride. She curled up against his shoulder, her head nestled in the crook of his neck with a trust that made his throat feel tight and achy.
He was almost certain she fell asleep as she cuddled against him without a sound except her slow, even breathing.
In the parking lot, Emma led the way to the battered car that he had seen before in the bookstore parking lot. She opened the rear door and he carefully deposited a still-sleeping Olive in her car seat, where she leaned her cheek against the headrest without opening her eyes.
After Emma secured her seat belt, she turned to him. “That was fun. Thanks for carrying her.”
“Thanks for letting me spend the afternoon with you.”
“I don’t think weletyou do anything. We kind of made you. Olive can be very bossy when she wants to be.”
“Good. She’ll go far in life.”
“I hope so.”
