Eddie’s song lifted and carried above them all. No one stirred. People were weeping silently but openly. Salt-water tears to a salt-water ocean. As the song ended, everyone threw their garlands, stems and wreaths into the water too and within moments it became thick with colour and scent, a carpet upon the sea’s surface, like a minuscule, beautiful scar in the water.

‘Mom, look!’

Mia looked down to find Hunter, her eldest boy at age eight, pointing out to sea. The surface was flat, a dead calm in the bay today – except for a single set of waves heading for them.

Everyone turned to look, releasing a collective gasp at the sight. In under a minute, the waves reached them, lifting up beneath each and every one of them and rocking them all. Eddie looked over at Mia and nodded. Clover knew what he was confirming, something that Cory had told her himself: it was Hawaiian belief that the departed would show their presence with a wave passing under the circle, and although Cory had been a California boy through and through, he had long ago adopted the spirituality of the ancient Hawaiian water men. He was telling them he was here, with them.

Leaving.

Mia sobbed in astonishment, in heartbreak, at her husband’s final goodbye. He was really gone. A chant suddenly started up, led by Eddie again, and everyone began to splash in unison. It wasn’t just an incredible sight, but the sound of it was too – hundreds of hands hitting the water to the same beat, droplets catching the sunlight. A dance on the water, with the water.

Clover watched the set of waves roll towards the shore, preparing to break themselves apart against the land and be gone forever. Her gaze fell again on the lone surfer. He had given up on their strange, private ceremony and was paddling back to shore, looking for an excitement not to be found here. Not today.

From her bed – the bed that had been hers for nine months last year – Clover could see the moon glistening on the water, throwing out a light that made dark dots of passing ships on the horizon. Closer by, she could hear the rhythmic roll and crash of the surf. It underpinned life here, in this bay, in this house. Even the wind let up sometimes but the surf always kept on rolling in, endless, repetitive, dependable. It would never not be here. Cliffs would crumble and mountains fall before those waves stopped.