Moonglass

my grandma, probably sitting up with her glass of wine and a “late movie,” like she loved to watch. I replayed the conversation I’d had with my dad, spoken and unspoken, until I had myself convinced we’d be all right here … somehow.
    But then I rolled onto my side and thought of my mother, here on this beach.
    And like a reflex I closed my eyes against it all.

CHAPTER 2
    I needed to run. Because for as long as I could remember, it was the one time when I could just move and not think of anything . Being in the water could calm me, but it wasn’t the same. When I was younger, after my mom was gone, the ocean was the place I went to be near her, where I would dive under the waves, thinking I’d maybe catch a glimpse of her there, hair splayed out like a mermaid’s—swimming, beautiful and strong and free. She felt close and peaceful that way, and since then, the water had become the place where I felt most at home. But being here, where she’d been before I even existed, where she and my dad had a history he had laid to rest until the night before, it somehow all felt too close. So I needed to run.
    I walked the narrow path to the sand and glanced at the run-down beach cottage as I passed it. In the weak morning light it seemed especially still and quiet. All the windows on the first story were hidden under sprawling bougainvillea, but upstairs I could make out a small window shrouded in dirt, and a tiny sagging balcony facing the water. Someone had woken up to a deserted beach a long, long time ago and had probably seen the same simple beauty of pelicans gliding in a line, wing tips hovering impossibly close to the surface of the swells.
    The beach and its cottages stood out in stark contrast to the other side of Pacific Coast Highway. Across four lanes, lining the hill s was a series of homes that were really more like the celebrity compounds I’d seen in magazines. The higher up the hill they were, the tall er the columns and the wider the arches got, like each house was in competition with the next. It was ridiculous. And sort of intimidating, if I was being honest with myself.
    These were the people whose kids I was gonna go to school with. Kids who sat up there on the hill with million-dollar views of the ocean, but who probably never really saw it. They probably liked the status it gave them, to live near the beach. But other than that, I guessed it was just a pretty backdrop for their BMWs and designer clothes.
    As soon as I had the thought, a tiny part of me realized how self-righteous that would sound if I actually said it out loud. But still . My friends and I prided ourselves on cute thrift store finds and our ability to dig up change anytime we needed to put gas into our old cars. Those were the things that entertained us and made life fun. And now they were the things that were missing. Before I let myself think about it too much, I walked over the sand and breathed in the morning.
    At the waterline I looked south to where my dad had pointed the night before, and I shook out my legs before starting off in a slow jog. On a good day mine were the first footprints on the sand and I floated, legs moving effortlessly over a landscape of sand, shells, and seaweed. Today my legs felt a little tight, so I eased into it. As I ran, my eyes automatically went to the ground, scanning for sea glass. It was an old habit.
    One that probably slowed me down. I followed the high tide line and the bits of shells, seaweed, and pebbles, but nothing glimmered at me from the sand, so I let my eyes wander up and over the waves that broke gray-green in the rising sun. Down the beach, in the shadow of the cliff, two heads bobbed in the water. A wave rose behind them, and one of the surfers paddled hard to catch it. I stretched out my strides and settled into a smoother pace, curious about the guys in the water.
    As I got closer, I could see they were shortboarders and that they were sitting practically on the rocks, waiting for a set to come through. A look at the flat glassy water said they were either extremely optimistic or extremely inexperienced. I decided they were good-looking, charming optimists and picked up my speed a little more. The sun had emerged from the morning gray, and the warmth of it loosened me up. As I neared the point, a small wave rose off it, and both surfers paddled hard. One stood and pumped his tiny surfboard with his legs, trying to maintain some kind of momentum. My dad would have