Moonglass

tried to make the best of it, but it wore on her. I was having to work overtime to keep us afloat, and she was in a place that wasn’t home to her, away from everything that was, and … she started to unravel … slowly.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “It was like she became two different people.”
    This felt familiar. This part I knew. The good days and the bad days.
    “I should have seen it more clearly, I guess, but through everything else—work, money, life—I didn’t. I kept thinking she’d get over it, or something would change, or it wasn’t as bad as it seemed….” He dropped his head, and I could see he hadn’t completely let go of blaming himself. I struggled for the right thing to say, but before I could come up with it, he raised his eyes to mine.
    “I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what I could have done differently, but I don’t know if any of it would have worked. I don’t know what was in her mind that night. I had to let that go, because she didn’t leave me any answers or reasons.” He pursed his lips together, and I could see that he was thinking something over. I waited. There had to be something more. The look on his face said there was.
    “She didn’t leave me with anything, but a while after … I found something that was meant for you.” He hoisted himself up and disappeared into his room, and I fought the impulse to go with him. I had always wished she’d left me something, over and over had imagined a clue that would explain it all away or say it was all a dream, and that she was off somewhere beautiful, waiting for me.
    My dad returned and held out to me a small unframed canvas. “I’ve been saving it … for the right time. It’s the only painting of hers I kept.” I took it into my hands, almost afraid to look. And when I did, chill s ran over me. It was a nighttime beachscape, and I recognized the tide pool rocks silhouetted in soft moonlight. The view from her window was calm, luminous, and spoke of gentle movement. I marveled at the care and detail, ran my fingers along the brushstrokes. And then I saw what I knew had to be there somewhere. Just outside of the moonlight’s reflection, barely discernible, flicked a silvery tail, the curve of which hinted at the beauty that lay just below the surface.
    I dropped my hands to my lap, the painting still in them, and stared out through the rain at the gray chop of the storm. My dad stepped closer, tentatively.
    “There’s … something on the back.” He sat down next to me and turned it over, and there, scrawled in the same gracefull loops I’d seen in her room, was an inscription:
    For Anna:
    My Beauty, Grace, and Strength
    Tears welled up in me again, and I looked up from the canvas to my dad, and I saw those things in him. I saw traces of grief and sadness that would always be there, but I also saw courage, and will, and goodness, all stemming from love at its purest. And so, without saying anything, I stepped over the space between us and put my arms around him, in an embrace that we hadn’t ever had, past whatever barriers we had put up. We stayed that way for a long time, both of us with tears running warm down our faces, neither of us wanting to move.
    He put his hand to the back of my head and must have felt the dried blood, because he pulled back and stood up to get a better look. “You did take a beating out there.”
    “Aah.” I winced as he spread my hair to examine the cut. “I’m fine, I think, as long as you quit messing with it.” He peered down at it a moment longer, then looked at me intently. “Are you? really?” I let a breath out, and it took me a second, but I felt it. A lightness that hadn’t been there before. She had left me something more. My fingers grazed the empty spot on my neck, and I glanced out the window before looking back at him. “I am.” I nodded. “I’m okay. Are you?” He thought for a second, then answered with a slow, tired smile. “Yeah. I am.” It wasn’t much. No big speech. No big talk. No elaborate scene. We had hugged. But something had shifted between us in that moment, and we both felt it. That didn’t change the fact that my dad was a man of few words, or that he still wasn’t quite sure what to do with a moment like that. He rubbed the top of my head. “Doesn’t look like you’ll be needing any stitches….”
    “Good.”
    “Surf is supposed to clean up by tomorrow. How ‘bout we get a morning session in and go for