Carefully I turn the page to find more photos. Of a small room with the morning light slanting through the window. A young, unshaven man lounging on the bed, his hand hovering tenderly above the same baby from the picture before, now asleep in the covers.

Of a child sitting at a table, food smeared around her laughing face.

Of a child tentatively walking, her hand on a table, a faceless man behind her holding his hands out to catch her if she falls.

And then there are the photos taken outside. Of a child on a swing, a young woman watching from the side as the child flies high in the air. Of a child with pigtails, her cheeks puffed out, ready to blow on a cake studded with small thin candles.

Fascinated, I flip through the pages faster and faster, watching this child grow.

Until I come to one of a young girl with her long black hair wet around her shoulders. Her mother stands behind her, holding her in her arms. Around them the peaks of waves are eternally still, their soft whitecaps captured before the crash.

It is the ocean. Just like the picture of my many-greats-grandmother when she was a child. And for a moment my breath catches because the little girl in the picture looks just like me. And the mother resembles my mother.

Tears begin to choke off the air in my throat and my body shudders. Even as I see how this little girl could never be me: her limbs too long and gangly, the mother shorter and plumper than my own. But for a moment, for the heartbeat before my mind is able to discern these tiny differences, I'm lost in the idea of my mother and me and the ocean.

I flip through the rest of the book but the remaining pages are empty and bare. This is the last photo. A girl I have never met. Who existed before the Return. In the ocean safe with her mother.

Suddenly, the roof of the attic is too close. This house is not enough for me anymore. I know that this solitude will never settle through my bones and I realize that I still long for the ocean and it's not enough to just sit in this life and be safe.

My body aches with this realization and I shake my head as I try to convince myself that this cannot be true. That I am happy here with Travis. That this is what I have always wanted: safety and love.

The air is too thick around me, pressing me in and under, and I stumble to the door and out onto the ledge overlooking the others on their platform. I swipe at my eyes as the bright light nearly blinds me.

I spend the rest of the afternoon watching the others go about their day. Sometimes one of them will stop to wave at me and I will wave back, but more often they live their lives as if I am not there, hovering, examining it all.