Page 103 of What You left in Me

But not yet. Not until I decide how. Not until I decide whether Ariane survives it.

The dashboard clock ticks, and my mind slips backward, like it always does when I need to remind myself this isn’t paranoia.

I take the next turn too hard and let the rear tires spit gravel just to hear something break that isn’t me. Headlightsrake a split-rail fence and the pasture beyond, all that pretty emptiness the town brags about. It doesn’t quiet me. Nothing has, not since I found out everything. Maybe even since Mom died.

Maybe I did go there for nostalgia. At least a part of me did.

Mom was holding my hand loosely, not because she was careless, but because she trusted both of us to do the right thing, even though I was five. Her other hand carried a ridiculous canvas tote that said Rhode Island: The Ocean State in flaking navy letters. It was stuffed with towels, a paperback, an ancient radio with a cracked antenna, and enough snacks to feed a minor army.

“We’ll lose the good spot if we don’t hurry,” she said, laughing.

I was trying to walk as fast as her, but my legs were short, and the sand kept making little landslides around my ankles. Every time I stumbled, her hand caught, steady and easy, like she knew I’d do it before I did.

“Look, look,” I said, because vocabulary is optional when you’re five and gravity is negotiable. The water was huge and glittering and loud. It was roaring and whispers at the same time. “It’s moving.”

“It tends to do that,” she says. “That’s what makes it fun.”

She spread our towel. I remember it being striped, red and white, already faded from other summers that belonged to her before they ever belonged to me.

“Shoes off, Captain,” she told me. “The beach police will come if you keep those on.”

“There’s beach police?”

“There are moms,” she said. “Which is worse. They can see everything.”

I kicked my sandals off so fast one of them flew and landed near a stranger’s umbrella. Mom laughed, jogging after it, and apologizing to the woman sitting there in a way that somehow made the woman smile instead of frown.

She sat. The ocean wind plucked at her hair, at the loose strap of her sundress, at the edge of the towel. She closed her eyes for a second, face turned to the sun, and I watched the tight lines she wears at home unwind, one by one.

“Your dad would hate this,” she said, not bitter, just amused.

“Daddy’s on the airplane,” I announced. “For business.”

“He is,” she agrees. “Which is why I get you all to myself. Lucky me.” She opened her eyes and tapped my nose with a sunscreen-slick finger.

That day, we made sandcastles, plural, because I kept changing my mind about design. The first one was tall and lopsided with a moat that kept collapsing. The second had shells pressed into its walls like jewels. The third was more of a sand lump with serious aspirations. The rest….I don’t remember.

“Of course it fell,” she said. “The ocean’s an art critic. We’ll show her the next draft.”

She never said no when I tell her we have to start again. She never said we’re wasting time.

When I got too obsessed with keeping one particular tower upright, piling handfuls of wet sand against it until my fingers pruned, she crouched beside me, serious.

“You know what the best part of castles is?” she asked.

“That they’re big,” I said. “And we can live in them.”

“That they don’t last,” she said. “That you get to make new ones. Imagine if you built one and it had to stay the same forever.”

I considered this. It sounded like a trap, the kind adults set when they’re about to tell you you’re wrong.

“That would be…” I began.

“Boring,” she supplied. “It would be boring. We’d never get to add secret tunnels or dragon stables. Things ending means we get to try again. That’s not always bad.”

I didn’t understand, not really, but I understood enough to let the wave that finally devoured our tower go without a scream. Mom cheered for the water like it won a fair fight, then scooped me up and spun me once, just enough to make the world tilt in a way that felt safe.

We went into the water when the sun climbed higher and the sand got too hot for bare feet. The water crashed into us, cold and shoving and full of bubbles. I shrieked, then laughed when I stay upright. Every time a bigger wave rolled in, she stepped slightly in front of me, a moving breakwater with a heartbeat.