Behind my own reflection in the window, barely visible, I could almost see it: the wraparound porch, the white railing, the old rocking chair that had been there since before I was born, and beyond all of it the Atlantic, gray-green and infinite.
My mother’s voice came back to me the way it often did when the beach house entered my thoughts. We had been sitting on that porch, the two of us, the summer before she got sick, watching the sun go flat and molten on the water. She had been laughing about something, leaning back in the rocker with her feet tucked up, her hair loose and salt-rough from the afternoon. She had said, in the middle of the laughter: Alex, look at that wave. Bigger than you were at five, I swear.
“Thanks for letting me know about the locks,” I said.
There was a brief silence. “What does that even mean?”
I hung up before she could arrive at an answer.
