Celestial BeachThe sound of the trunk closing, enveloping my single suitcase, rang with an odd finality. I stared at my warped reflection in the rear window. “I shouldn’t go.”
Sandra, my best friend since high school, put an arm around my shoulders. “You need this, Dee.” Her smile managed to look both hopeful and concerned. “You deserve a vacation.”
I couldn’t shake the strange sense of wrongness looking at my car gave me. I’d always loved driving… before. “Something isn’t right.”
Sandra’s smile faded. The concern in her eyes deepened. “David’s been gone two years, Dee. You can’t hide in this house forever.”
Was that what I’d been doing? Hiding? It felt more like waiting. Waiting for my life to make sense again. Waiting for the world to stop spinning along without me.
Waiting for David to come home.
At some point I should have realized none of those things were ever going to happen.
“Okay.” I gave Sandra the best smile I could muster. “Okay, I’m going.”
Her squeeze tightened. “Good. Call me when you get there.” She smiled at our joint reflections. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
If loading my suitcase had felt strange, driving away was ten times worse. The road spooled away from home like a funhouse floor, propelling me while tipping out of kilter with the world, leaving me on a precarious, moving ledge.
It’s only a couple weeks, I told myself. You can do this.
When had I become such a recluse?
The sun was warm through the car windows. It’d be nice to see the ocean. To hear the whoosh of the waves, and smell the brine and sea air. David and I had always loved going to the coast. Booking a dinner cruise, or a whale-watching excursion. Shopping in lazy little towns for things we didn’t need and would never use.
God, I miss you, Darling.
The tears came as they always did—unbidden, but familiar. Like the pain, I thought they’d let up eventually. They never did.
WELCOME TO CELESTIAL BEACH.
The sign surprised me. Had I driven three hours already? I grabbed a tissue to wipe my face, checking myself in the rearview, as though it mattered to anyone.
I rolled down the window, taking a deep breath. Not visible yet, I still sensed the closeness of the ocean, drawing me in like the tide. Something white on the road caught my attention.
2024.
Someone had painted the numbers on the pavement.
“Okay…?”
It might have made sense, if 2024 wasn’t already three years in the past.
Maybe the number meant something else to someone. An address, or the year they’d graduated. A mile later the road curved west, away from the distant mountains. Sand crept into the grass and in spots along the shoulder, telltale signs. Screeching gulls provided beach music as weathered houses came closer together, leading into the small New England town.
I smiled at the familiar sights. Dell Dairy and Ice Cream stand was crowded with people like always.
Farmer’s in the Dell! How many times had we quipped the same joke?
I slowed as I passed the 7-11 where we always stopped for slurpies.
Maybe I should have gone somewhere else. Somewhere not so filled with memories of David. Of us. But the small town had always felt like a second home.
I found the side-street, amazed as always at the sight of the ocean only a few hundred feet from the small wood fence at the end of the road, skirted with sawgrass and nearly swallowed by sand. I pulled into one of the Skylark’s eight parking spots.
I frowned at the sky blue car beside mine.
Looks just like David’s.
The intense feeling of strangeness crashed down, pinning me to my seat. For a moment it was difficult to breathe. Then a woman walked by, headed for the beach with a towel and a small cooler, and the oddness lifted like a cloud. I grabbed my purse before I could chicken out.
“There you are!”
My breath caught, and I nearly tripped.
“Whoa! Whoa. You okay?” A hand caught my arm.
I knew the touch as well as the voice, but looking up, seeing his face, his blue-gray eyes, was like peeking past forever and into the beyond.
“David?” How could this be happening?
His smile, the single dimple on the left side of his mouth… I could even smell his cologne. Maybe I’d had a stroke and was dead, my body left behind somewhere.
“I thought you’d never get here.” He popped the trunk, pulling out my suitcase. “Driving good?” He stopped beside me, his brows twitching downward. “Everything okay?”
I reached out a hand, unable to help but touch his face. His lips.
He kissed my fingers. “You’re scaring me, sweetheart.” He dropped my things and took my hand in both of his, pulling me into an embrace.
I melted against him.
How had I survived without him for even one day?
“Honey? What is it?” He pulled me away to wipe tears from my cheeks, worry etched into his face.
“N-Nothing. I’m okay. I just… I missed you.”
His face cleared and he grinned. “I missed you, too!” He buried his face in my neck, breath and whiskers tickling the spot behind my ear he knew so well.
If I was dead, my body had no idea.
Tingling, I followed him across the ground-floor balcony of the room we always asked for, unsure how any of this could be happening, but too overwhelmingly happy to question. A flash of white paint flitted through my mind’s eye.
2024.
Could the road have somehow taken me to the past?
As the husband I thought I’d lost forever set my suitcase down and turned to face me, I knew it didn’t matter. Wherever… whenever I was, I’d never leave.
My cell rang.
Sandra.
With trembling fingers I turned the phone off. This was a vacation, after all.
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