Chapter 4: The Day on the Rocks

By the last week of August, the cottage had stopped feeling borrowed. It had begun to feel inevitable.

They woke before sunrise most mornings now, drawn outside by the hush that lives only in the hour when the tide is neither coming nor going. Nawana brewed coffee strong enough to wake the dead; Susan carried it down the cliff path in two chipped enamel mugs that had belonged to some long-ago keeper. They drank it sitting on the lowest ledge of black rock, legs dangling above water so clear they could see the shadows of fish moving like secrets.

That particular morning (the thirtieth of August, though neither of them knew yet that it would become one of the days they would measure the rest of their lives against), the sky was a ridiculous, saturated blue. The air smelled of hot pine and low-tide rot and something indefinably sweet, like the world had decided to forgive them for every mistake they had ever made.

They spent the day the way children spend perfect summer days: without plan, without hurry, without end.

They walked the crescent beach at the foot of the cliff barefoot, jeans rolled to their knees, collecting treasures the way other people collect regrets. A piece of sea glass, the exact green of Nawana’s favorite oil paint. A mussel shell lined with mother-of-pearl that caught the light like a tiny moon. A shard of china worn soft and round, its pattern long since erased by centuries of waves.

They turned over rocks and startled crabs into sideways flight. They lay on their backs in a tidepool warmed by the sun and watched anemones close like slow fists around their fingers. Nawana named every cloud after a lover she had never actually had (Cumulus Cassandra, Stratus Delilah, Cirrus Ophelia), then laughed when Susan pretended to be jealous.