It was just meant to be a short walk by the sea.
At the paint-peeled sign for Darley’s Beach, Meredith drove towards the coast and took the high road that cut along the granite cliffs. The way was fringed with cedars on her left and sheer drops to the ocean on her right, and she followed it to the abandoned lookout on Grasmere Point, where the broken boards of picnic tables stake the ground like fallen crucifixes.
When her tyres hit gravel, she stopped. That was where they always stopped – she, Charlie and Evelyn – for one last look at the sea.
The wooden steps to the beach were hidden by an overgrown hemlock, but she found them – cracked and wind worn and still solid. So she took them down to the shore and walked to the steady pulse of the surf.
As daylight faded, images of an open casket punctured her thoughts. The funeral director had followed every instruction: an Hermès scarf around her neck, lips painted a rich Chanel red. With an anguish that sucked the air out of her, Meredith pushed away those images and tried to think of earlier days, when the three of them walked along Darley’s Beach together, watching the autumn storms roll in.
She passed the rock where they sat on the afternoon of her father’s memorial service. The search team never recovered his body and that fact – the lack of a body – made becoming an orphan even worse.
Now, Meredith is orphaned all over again.
She looks up, her face wet, but sees only darkness.
Night has fallen.
The moon rakes the beach like a searchlight, seeking out the bleached bones of driftwood.
Then the clouds shift again and drape the shore in black.
She peers into the darkness pooling around the cedars that edge the beach, their lacy leaves twitching in the shadows.
She scans the beach for landmarks, but the shifting moonlight disorients.
She doesn’t know this place. She’s wandered too far. The car is miles away…
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