Once I’m outside and down the stairs, I can breathe again. I just needed a little distance from that folder filled with bits and pieces of love I’m going to give to children who will never know their father. It was suffocating me, full-on claustrophobia.
Out here, though, the world is wide open. The breeze is cool and salty and the sky is filled with stars.
I make for the beach. No one and nothing else is out, not even clouds, so the sea churns with shards of white glass that get consumed and born again with each new set of waves.
The sand is cool between my toes. Midnight tides hiss and retreat, hiss and retreat, like the ocean is trying to scrub the shore clean. My flip-flops dangle from one hand, a half-melted Snickers bar from the other. The twins have been demanding chocolate all d
