I take the stairs down to the beach and find I can take a deep breath for the first time in months. A couple with a dog walks far ahead in the distance, but mostly it’s me and the birds. Phoebe could tell you every one of their names, taught by her grandmother, a great naturalist. I know seagulls and murres and some of the biggest prey birds, like eagles, but not all of them.
But I don’t need to know their names to admire them. The gulls shine white in the patches of sunlight, bright against the muted blue water of the creek flowing out of the mountains. They ride the current down toward the sea, grooming their feathers and squawking, splashing in pleasure, then fly up and start over, like children going down a slide.
It gives me peace. My headache, almost constant since the attack, eases slightly. I breathe in the salt air.
I met Phoebe on this very beach. Early summer, right after my dad took over the church. The day was overcast, threatening rain, too cold for the Portland tourists who mobbed the place on summer weekends.
Phoebe was a scrawny girl, so skinny you could see the individual bones of her knees. Her dark hair was scraped back into a knot on the top of her head that dripped pieces of hair down her freckled face. A lot of freckles, actually—freckles across her nose and sprinkled down her arms and over her chest.
But all I cared about was that she looked like she was my age. She was the only person on the beach, bent over a tide pool, peering. “Hi,” I said.
She looked up. “Hi.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Phoebe. What’s yours?”
“Suzanne. I’m twelve.”
“Me too.” Her eyes were a pretty color, green and gold, like the tide pool itself. “Where do you live?”
Reluctantly, I glanced toward the bluff that hid the town from us. “Behind the First Pentecostal Church.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t tell if that meant she knew my dad was the preacher. “I’m here visiting my grandma,” she said. “I come every summer.”
“Does she live in a house with a purple door?”
She grinned. “You know her?”
“We met at the grocery store. She was really nice to me.”
Phoebe nodded.
I peered into the water. “Whatcha looking at?”
“All kinds of things—anemones and sea stars and mussels. Oooh”—she pointed—“see the periwinkle?”
I hadn’t lived by the ocean before, and all I saw were a bunch of things stuck to the rocks, but I didn’t want to look stupid. “Cool.” Something caught my eye in the water, a rippling movement. “Hey, what’s that?”
“Wait!” She bent in close. “Holy cow! It’s an octopus! Maybe it got stuck.”
“Will it be okay?”
“I don’t know.” She looked toward the edge of the water, swirling against flat sand. “The tide is going out.”
“But it comes back, right?”
She bit her lip. “Yeah, but maybe not for hours.”
“My dad always says it’s better to leave nature alone, let it do what it’s supposed to do.”
Phoebe straightened. “That’s right.” She reached a finger into the water and stroked the tiny octopus as if it were a cat. It moved, swayed, swirled, but didn’t seem particularly alarmed. “Do you want to try?”
A primal shudder moved along my shoulders. I didn’t like the idea of sticking my bare hand in the water at all. Who knew what lurked in there? “No, thanks.”
She didn’t seem to need me to talk, which was a relief. She pointed and squatted and peered, and I hung with her, trying to not look like a complete idiot.
After a while, she straightened and seemed to really see me. “You have the longest hair I’ve ever seen.”
My braids nearly reached my knees. “I’m not allowed to cut it.”
“Why?”
“If a woman have long hair,” I quoted, “it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering.” At her blank look, I added, “The Bible. My dad’s a preacher.”
“Oh. My grandma goes to the Methodist church. She makes me go to Sunday school sometimes. Is your dad Methodist?”
I shook my head. “Pentecostal.”
She blinked. “You know, you could be Rapunzel.”
“I like that.”
She brushed her hands together, shedding dark sand. “You want to come to my grandma’s house for lunch? Bologna, probably.”
The closed doors of the world blew open. “Sure,” I said, like it didn’t matter much.