of conceiving naturally. I knew that wasn’t true. But I hadn’t wanted to push him.
The helpless look in the little boy’s eyes made me slam my laptop shut. My mind wandered back to the drone, the anonymous text, back to the gun dilemma. I never did make it to the gun store after I bumped into Pippa in Carmel, two weeks ago. I figured in the state I was in, it was dangerous for me to possess a weapon. Perhaps I’d been foolish, as now I sat alone, vulnerable, with no means to protect myself.
My hands shaking, I needed to calm my nerves. Crates of champagne were sitting in the basement, still waiting for our house-warming party—the party we never got round to throwing. Juan and I had only been here a couple of weeks before his accident. It had taken me a while to open up one of the crates of Mumm, to finally admit the party was never going to happen, that Juan was gone for good. We had enough of the stuff, and who else was going to drink it besides me? I’d been stashing it for a rainy day, and it had been—both figuratively and literally—pouring.
“So you know nothing about wine?” That was what Juan had asked me on our first dinner date. I felt so uneducated, so uncool. But he loved it. I think he saw himself as a sort of Henry Higgins with me. The mousy-haired English girl he could teach and mentor.
“I’m afraid not,” I admitted, smoothing my boring corduroy skirt over my knobbly knees and wishing I’d dressed more flamboyantly for our first date. I wanted to tell him I was used to drinking no more than half a pint of beer with my mates down the pub, or at best, a vodka tonic, but I was too shy. Too intimidated by his laser-blue eyes and flashing, fast-as-a-gunshot smile. No man this handsome had ever paid me such attention.
“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he’d said, “for you to learn about wine.”
All the time in the world. Well, he was wrong about that. I could taste the bitter tang on my tongue now.
I slipped downstairs, emptied a bottle of Mumm into a big old Thermos and set off for my daily hike down to the beach.
I wondered if the drone operator would be back. I hadn’t seen it since that day it coincided with the anonymous text, a couple of weeks ago.
I laced my sneakers up tighter and surveyed the dramatic seascape below. The rumpled ocean curled its waves on the rocky coastline before it smoothed out to the beautiful, sweeping bay.
Reaching the shoreline half an hour later, I was a little breathless from my hasty walk. The twisty path wound itself beneath Douglas firs and dipped through a redwood grove, in some places so steep and rocky I had to watch my step. Once on the beach, I needed to make sure I had enough time before the tide gushed in. Any later, and I’d be up to my knees; it would be a scramble to get back before being swept out to sea.
There was no sign of a drone on the walk down. What a relief. The backpack baby and her parents were nowhere to be seen, either. The beach looked eerily empty this afternoon, with the pearly mist bouncing off the waves like dry ice.
I took off my shoes to feel the sand beneath my feet, but it was glacially cold. At the eve of winter it was a little mad to go barefoot, but it made me feel alive. Feeling alive was something I no longer took for granted. I could never get enough of this restless foamy ocean. Never tire of its haunting, mystical beauty, the salty spray running along my skin, the hairs on my arms lifting with its chill. I needed to feel it: the sand between my toes, sucking at my heels with every slam of every ceaseless wave, reminding me that some things would never die. The tide. The rising of the moon. The sun setting in the west.
I heard a distant harbor seal bark and the sound of a guitar gliding on the wind. As I turned the bend in the bay, I spied—in the distance—a group of young people. Not children, not adults, and not even typical teenagers. I can’t explain it; they had an ethereal quality about them, especially amidst the swirling mist, as if they were floating