Chapter 93 - When the Tide Came Back
Caroline organized the beach trip.
She sent a list.
Then another list explaining the first one.
Noah called it excessive.
Caroline reminded him that he had once arrived at her house with three books, one sock, and no toothbrush.
He stopped objecting.
We rented a house close enough to the water that sand appeared in rooms nobody had entered wearing shoes.
Isabel declared the smallest bedroom hers because it had a round window.
The twins argued over who had chosen the bed nearest the door first.
Lena unpacked lunch.
I stood on the deck and listened to the sea.
For a moment, I remembered Elena beside another stretch of coast, laughing because the wind had ruined a photograph.
Caroline came to stand beside me.
“You went somewhere.”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“I do that too.”
We walked along the beach after dinner.
The children ran ahead with buckets. Lena followed at a pace that allowed Isabel to show her every shell she considered important.
Caroline carried the old photograph of Elena from the memory book.
She had brought it because the boys asked.
Now she showed them where it had been taken.
“Not this exact beach,” she explained. “But the same sort of wind. Your mother complained for an hour about sand in her sandwich.”
“What kind?” Nico asked.
“Cheese.”
“Reasonable complaint.”
Caroline laughed.
Later, when the children had gone farther down the shore with Lena, she said, “I used to think remembering her properly meant staying sad.”
I looked at the water.
“I know.”
“But she was happy here.”
“Yes.”
Caroline folded the photograph carefully.
“Then perhaps we should be allowed to be.”
The next morning, the boys went into the water with an instructor for the activity they had booked.
I watched from the shore.
They were older now.
Capable of following instructions from someone whose voice was not mine.
Lena stood beside me with her arm through mine.
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Counting.”
I stopped counting their heads and watched what they were actually doing.
Noah fell.
Nico laughed.
Then Nico fell.
Their laughter reached us over the water.
That evening, we baked Elena’s lemon cake in a kitchen none of us understood.
Caroline used too much lemon.
Lena added extra icing.
Isabel covered the top with decorations that had no connection to either ingredient.
We ate it outside while the light faded.
Nobody lowered their voice when Elena’s name came up.
Nobody needed permission to laugh afterward.
When the tide reached the children’s abandoned sandcastle, we watched the walls soften and fall.
May you like
Then Nico picked up his bucket.
“We can make another one tomorrow.”
