Moonglass

were not. How had he seen me? How had I not seen him? How in the world had this frail old man dragged me from the water? I had only ever seen him crawl. But he had saved me. I kept my eyes on the water because it seemed he would be more comfortable that way.
    Waves crashed down, surreal, over the rocks he had plucked me from, and I spoke without knowing really what I was going to say.
    “Do you believe things happen for a reason? Or do you think everything is just coincidence—that out there you were just in the right place at the right time?”
    More than a few beats passed, and I wondered if he had heard me. But then he inhaled deeply, dropped his head, and spoke into his lap. “I don’t know the answer to that.” Cautiously his eyes came up to meet mine. “I’ve been asking myself that question for the last twenty years.” An eternity to crawl the beach, trying to answer that question.
    “And you?” He motioned gently with his head, toward the window. “Seems you were in the wrong place at the wrong time out there on those rocks. And that you know better.”
    Now it was me who avoided his eyes. I felt the absence of weight around my bare neck and consciously fought the urge to bring my hand to where my moonglass had rested. Behind the realization of what I had done, the guilt and anger from the moment when I had unclasped the necklace lined up again like the sets of waves outside, ready to come crashing down. I shook my head and laughed, joyless.
    “Or maybe I was meant to be out there. Maybe I’m just as selfish and thoughtless as my mother was.” It came out bitter, and he flinched, almost imperceptibly, before his forehead creased. I looked at her cottage. “Or maybe I’m why she was that way.” We both sat quietly, and I could feel the crawling man considering what I had said. He sat hunched over, forearms propped on his thighs, hands knitted together. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his crosses dangling in front of him. There were three, of different sizes, and they twirled and twisted gently around each other. Guilt strung around his neck, for everyone to see. Mine was somewhere out in the water, but not gone from me. It would be mine for life.
    “Nothing could be further from the truth, you know. About your mother.”
    For a second I wondered if I had spoken my thoughts aloud. He was looking at me with his sad eyes, so clear and present for someone I had first suspected might be crazy, but I reacted before I had a chance to think about it.
    “The truth? I’ve always known the truth. I saw it. My mom walked out into the water one night when I was seven years old.” I spat the words out, hard and angry. “She drowned herself. And all my life since then, everyone has called it an accident.” I paused for a second, gathering my anger. “She left me on the beach that night, and it was no accident. She knew I was there, and you know what she did? She left me a piece of sea glass to find while she killed herself. That’s the truth.”
    I looked down at my hands and drew in a shaky breath. The crawling man nodded, barely. Again, he seemed to be thinking.
    “It was coming … long before you were around.”
    I looked up at him and ceased to breathe. “You knew my mom?”
    He shook his head. “Knew of her. I’ve been here on this beach for a long time, and I’ve watched life go on all around it. And your mother, she was full of light, and life.” He pursed his lips together and then spoke more carefully. “But she fought darkness too, some days. It was in her long before you came around. We all saw it.” He was thinking back, looking at something I couldn’t see.
    “Did you live here? In one of the cottages?”
    “Yes.” He smiled, but his eyes remained sad. “The best days of my life I lived here. On the north side.” We both glanced out the window. “That’s where I would see her on the bad days, walking the beach alone, without your dad, and I knew on those days that she was fighting something nobody else understood.”
    I stared out at the water, remembering her good days and her bad ones, and he paused. Then he looked at me with purpose. “When you were born, you changed her. For the better. That’s what children do.”
    My brain fired off questions in quick succession: How could he know? He had seen us? What else had changed?
    He went on, and I listened so hard I forgot about the pain in my head and the ache in my limbs. “She would walk the beach with you,