Windswept
A moment from the future of The Long Way Home, inspired by picture 19 from CWE#3 at Jix.
Dan stood a short distance from the shore, green grass underfoot and a dismal grey vista before him. The ocean, while calm, reflected the colour of the clouds above. A stiff breeze ruffled his hair and stung his face. He tucked his bare hands into his pockets to keep them warm. Gentle waves rolled onto a beach of brownish sand, dark rocks poking through here and there.
This place had meant something, although until very recently, he had not known it. He was oblivious to so many things from his family’s past. Most of the time, it didn’t bother him, but today he was in the mood to be gloomy.
He did not turn when he heard soft footsteps approaching and he barely moved when Honey’s hand touched his arm.
“You okay?” she asked.
He noticed that she, too, looked out to sea. A stone’s throw from shore, the water sloshed around a submerged rock, which peeked into view occasionally. He focussed his eyes on that spot.
“Yeah. I guess.” He sighed. “I’d rather see it on a sunny day, but I guess it’s appropriate this way.”
She nodded and the hand tightened on his arm.
They stood in companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Dan struggled to find the words to express what he was feeling – the sense of loss, the might-have-beens which sometimes plagued his nights, the hopes he held for the future and the tangle of emotions the situation evoked. He wanted to tell her how much it meant to him that she was by his side, that he didn’t have to be alone. In the end, he said nothing. Honey knew. She knew all of it, despite his inability to tell her how he felt.
“We’ll come back here, some day,” Honey told him, her voice low. “The sun will shine and it will be warm. A summer’s day. Our children will play in the sand and splash at the edge of the water. And we can remember.”
He turned to her, a sad smile on his lips, and the tenderness in her face took his breath away. Heedless of the biting ocean breeze, he took her face in his hands and kissed her, soft and long and full of promise. One of his arms found its way to her waist and he pulled her closer, taking strength from her and sharing warmth. He forgot the grey ocean, the lowering sky which threatened rain and the wild wind that caught at Honey’s hair and lashed it against his exposed skin.
When he pulled away at last, he felt the tears on his own face – the first tears for a loss that seemed deeper with every passing hour; a loss he had thought he’d been prepared for but now discovered to be so much more profound than he’d expected. She wiped them away for him and he saw tears in Honey’s eyes, too.
But he also saw hope. He saw the love they shared, reflected in her eyes. He saw their future together and the life they were building, piece by piece. He remembered their loyal friends, who formed a family stronger than the ties of blood.
I am not alone.
That one thought echoed around and around in his head. Not alone.
Not the long-ago teenager, whose parents had died and who lived on the streets of New York. Not the rebel, who so desperately wanted somewhere to belong, but didn’t like the place he had landed. Not even the troubled young man, who struggled to be happy in a relationship he wanted, but which had taken a path not of his choosing. All of those things were his past, but not his future.
A sense of peace washed over him and he knew he had been right to come here today, to see this place with his own eyes, to hear the shushing sound of the waves, the whistle of the breeze and the call of sea birds; to feel the wind against his skin and taste the salt that it carried.
He pulled Honey closer again for another kiss, shorter this time, as the wind was picking up. Then, with one last backward glance at the water, now shadowed by approaching rain, he led her back to the car, hand in hand.
Honey was right: they would return here one day. And it would hurt, but not as much as it did now; he’d endured enough losses to know that with a certainty. In the meantime, life would go on, like it always did.
They got into the car as the first drops of stinging rain fell, driven almost horizontal by the wind. Honey shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. Dan smiled at her, turned up the heat and pulled out of the parking space, away from this place with its haunting remembrance of loss, and headed back to their home.
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