The grass was cool, soft, and a soggy squelch of wet earth rose up between her toes with every step Eileen took. In one hand, she had a half-finished bottle of wine gripped by its neck while her other reached for the weathered wooden handrail that ran the length of the steps leading from Clare’s backyard to the beach below. In the dark, with only the half-moon high in the sky to light her way, she took her time descending the splintery and steep stairs. The last thing any of them needed right now was a drunk Eileen found dead with a broken neck.

Remembering exactly how Clare had come to receive the gift of protection from their mother all those years ago, Eileen didn’t have the stomach or the strength to read any more about her sister’s life tonight. She left Clare’s words spread open but facedown on the glass coffee table and wandered with her wine through the dark house and out the back door. The sound and smell of the ocean pulsing just below called to her.

The last step was half-buried by sand, and then her feet sank, one step after another, into the cold and shifting beach as she made her way toward the water’s edge. She walked until the sand solidified, like cool concrete spread even and smooth by the waves’ relentless grooming, then stood and faced the dark swell and rush of power before her, its salty winds blowing through her hair and making her eyes water.

Her legs folded beneath her, crisscross like her children, and she raised the bottle’s lip to hers and took a long swallow. The crash of the waves filled her ears and was nearly loud enough to drown out her own thoughts entirely.

Nearly.

She looked down at her left hand. Because of all the traveling, stress, and drinking she’d been doing over the last few days, her fingers were horribly swollen, which made her wedding set cut painfully into her ring finger. Eileen screwed the wine bottle down into the sand, then began working her wedding band and engagement ring off her finger until she held them in the palm of her right hand. She considered, briefly, walking to the water’s edge and tossing them into the rushing waves before her. The thought was simultaneously liberating and terrifying, but she couldn’t help but wonder if essentially that in effect was what had already happened to her marriage. Because, no matter what happened next, how could she ever expect to feel the same way about these tokens of the trust and promises Eric had made and then betrayed?

“Mind if I join you?” a voice suddenly asked.