Mary
A close call. Too close.
I see her every day, scuttling down the beach to feed the gulls—the Inn Lady. She’s a bright, pretty thing, but sad, too, I think, and just a little broken. But then, everyone is fighting some private war, grappling with some missing piece, carrying some unseen burden. She hides it well enough with her quick step, always in a hurry, always one step ahead of something only she can see or feel. And yet I see it plain. To one well acquainted, there is no hiding grief. It stains, you see, seeping deep into your flesh, like a brand. A shame in one so young and lovely, but then, I was young and lovely once, too. Life plays no favorites when she sets out to break a heart.
Until today the Inn Lady has stayed away like the others, seeming to pay me no mind, though more than once I have felt her eyes between my shoulder blades. I always feel their eyes. But hers are different somehow, even when standing nearly face-to-face. It has been a long time since anyone had the boldness to look me in the eye, to risk a true seeing. Oh, they glance in my direction, but they’re afraid of what they might see, a mirror, perhaps, of the future, should life go suddenly and terribly wrong. But it couldn’t ever happen to them. They’re good, clean, decent people. And so their curiosity, and their sympathy, too, if they ever had any, turns into something hard and mean. They turn away, disgusted, while a little part of them thanks their maker it isn’t them.
But this woman is different. There was no disgust in her gaze, only curiosity and something like compassion as our eyes held for that long, rainy moment. And now, as I pedal away like the madwoman I am, I feel I have received a great kindness, perhaps the greatest of my life.
How strange that such a gift should come at the hands of a stranger, rather than the hands of someone who claimed to love me. But then, they’re all gone now, those loved ones. Swept away, burned away, blown away.
Through my fault.
Through my fault.
Through my most grievous fault.