the evening light turning everything soft.
“I don’t know about forever,” I said. “But we’re staying where we can breathe.”
Emma leaned against my shoulder. Noah leaned against the other.
For eleven years, I had thought the worst thing that could happen was losing the life I built.
I was wrong.
The worst thing would have been teaching my children to survive inside it.
The tide came in quietly, washing away the day’s footprints one by one. Behind us, the city lights began to glow. Ahead of us, the ocean kept opening, wide and dark and endless, and for once, I was not afraid of what I could not see.
