We went to the beach a week after the hospital. After a week of sleep and food and water. After my parents had conversations with the doctors and Ruth’s therapist, making sure this trip, this dive, was still going to be all right. At the beach, all the adults sat with the towels and treats while Ruth and I walked along the sand to our cave. We both walked slowly.

“You okay?” Ruth said.

My face must have been putting on quite the anxious show considering she was the one asking that question.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I’m glad we’re finally here.”

“Me too,” she said.

Then we were at the cave. We stepped inside. The space still felt huge. There were boulders big enough for climbing piled up in the middle, just like before, and a big circle in the ceiling opening up to the sky. This place had always seemed like a cathedral to me.

We didn’t immediately walk over to the far corner where we’d buried our box. Instead, I ran my hands along the yellow rock walls. Ruth followed behind me, until slowly I touched my way into the shadows.

Both of us remembered right where to dig. We hadn’t brought shovels, but dug in wrist deep into the sand. We sped up our digging, flinging sand like dog-paddlers. We dug until the shadows shifted. We dug until our hole was a foot wider and two feet deeper than we both knew it needed to be. I flung one last plum-size rock out of the empty hole and sat back against the cave wall. Then Ruth sat back too, next to me. We didn’t say anything, just felt our sand-raw fingertips and listened to the seagulls caterwauling above us.

“Well,” Ruth said finally. “I know it’s not what you hoped. I’m sorry.”

The tide slept low outside the cave, but inside my own skin it rose and rose and rose. A tide of all the things I couldn’t change and couldn’t control. Good days, bad days. Sisters, music in other people’s ears, thoughts in their brain. Treasure buried in the sand. Even photographs, like the photographic subjects themselves, could shock me. Take me off guard. Could be full of surprises. New, old, magic, gold surprises.