When the sun breaks through the clouds this morning Justin is already awake and outside with Shady leaning against his leg. He can reach down and fit his hand right atop the dog’s head. Neither one of them has been able to sleep. Shady has been just as upset as Justin. Dogs know things. They know and know and know.

Every time Justin closed his eyes to find sleep he kept seeing Bell (in her muumuu strolling across the yard, in her rocker, at the piano, cooking at the stove, in her messy office, laughing, sitting with her feet in the pool, taking communion when they brought it from the church on Sunday evenings). And realizing that Bell was gone (forever) made him miss his grandmother and his mother in an aching way he had never felt before. Especially Granny. If he could just talk to her, he’d feel better.

A couple times his father had come to the door and twisted the knob, rapped his knuckles on the wood. “Justin? Answer me, I’m worried.” The last time Justin had gone to the door and opened it wide enough to say that he was alright.

“Can’t you sleep?” Asher asked.

“I was until you knocked,” Justin lied.

After that, Shady wouldn’t stop nudging at him with his cold, wet nose, like he wanted to go out.

So they had gone outside in the middle of the quiet night. They sat still on the porch while nothing moved about the island except the Everything.

At daybreak, the light was so orange and big that Justin expected a sound to come with it. He reckoned the waves must have shifted and shimmered, just to welcome it in. Then the glow grew to the full brightness of day like a little knob was being turned with careful ease to “on.”

Then, the sounds of Key West:

Birds, mostly.

And those crazy-ass roosters. Crowing and picking through the dirt, roaming every whichaway, standing on top of the tombstones, clicking along on people’s porches, perched on fence posts, fancying down the street like they own the place. Maybe they do.

Justin feels like all the world exists beneath a conch shell and the sky is the pink of its insides. He knows his father will be up soon. He has to get moving.

He wishes he could have Evona and Bell and his father and Uncle Luke and Granny and his mother, all right here together, and they’d get along and everything would be fine. The light here makes you better and the water makes you happy and all the birds singing and all the flowers blooming and the trees greening and the sky pinking in morning and purpling in the evenings—they all remind you every waking minute that you’re living and breathing.