Judith
Present Day
Judith was halfway to the beach when she forgot where she was going. Not forgot, no—that implied something darker and deeper. It just slipped her mind. Like grappling with a fish, her thoughts slid right out if she didn’t hang on tight enough. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, in front of a window full of flowers. She remembered Meredith had come home to stay for a while; maybe Judith had been intending to get her some flowers as a welcome? It seemed like something Meredith would appreciate, so whether it was her true intention or not, Judith went inside the flower shop. The cloud of scents was disorienting, thick as soup, in a room no bigger than her kitchen. Her nose perked up at the scent of roses; there was a full wall of different arrangements, labeled for the intended occasion: wedding, anniversary, funeral.
As she ventured farther, the walls narrowed until she was surrounded, stroked by petals and pricked by thorns. She followed the sound of running water to the back of the shop, where she found a row of black buckets, each filled with delicate Thalias, their stems bloodred and blooms a delicate violet. A girl with coppery red hair, couldn’t have been more than sixteen, hovered over the last in the row. So quickly Judith almost missed it, the girl tore one of the petals off the bloom and slipped it onto her tongue, a communion wafer.
To ward off evil spirits.
Who’d told her that? Judith held a brief image of a girl’s face in her mind, with narrow eyes and a thin nose and… It faded before she could get a look at it. A friend, she thought. And in her heart she knew she was right, even if she couldn’t remember.
She didn’t like being this close to the water. It made her mind go all fuzzy. Thoughts—hers and not hers—slipped in and out like fish through a reef. When she was younger, it was easier to push through the fog. Now she was lucky if she made it through the other side at all. She needed to get home.
Judith left the shop, lips forming a silent mantra—get home, get home—but when she started toward the sidewalk, she discovered she wasn’t sure which way home was. She’d get there eventually if she kept moving, she figured. Muscle memory. But instead of getting farther from the water, her traitorous feet brought her closer, and soon sand spilled over the sides of her shoes as she walked over the dunes and to the water’s edge.
Cassie. The name came to her in a flash, and she instantly looked up the cliff, toward the rundown house she knew sat behind the trees. She started toward the cliff, stopped by a splash beside her. A woman flailed in the surf, mouth wide in a silent scream. Judith’s stomach dropped.
She’s here.
But then the woman’s arms were only curves in the curling wave, her hair dark weeds caught in the sea foam. A memory. Just a memory. Heart pounding, Judith looked up, blinking hard at the bright sunlight. She glanced at the lighthouse, where a woman dove from the widow’s walk. A scream died in Judith’s throat as the woman became a gull diving for a food wrapper.
She pressed her fists into her eyes, but the visions continued behind her eyelids. Memories or warnings or both.
Finally she opened her eyes to see Alice standing at the edge of the water, the girl with the coppery red hair gripping her shoulders.
Oh God, Alice. How could she forget Alice? Little Alice with tears streaming down her face and snot bubbling in her cupid’s bow. Judith ran toward them. She crouched and pulled Alice tight against her, each of her granddaughter’s soundless sobs a blow to her chest. God, what was wrong with her?
Alice rubbed her face in Judith’s hair. Her voice tickled Judith’s neck. “You left. I got scared.”
“Shush, honey, I know. I’m sorry. I got distracted and I just… I’m here. It’s okay, now. It’s okay.”
The girl circled the pair of them, pausing behind Alice. From her vantage point, Judith could only see the girl’s knees, raw, with dirt in the creases. A gardener’s knees.
Then the girl squatted, flashing her underwear before tucking the skirt of her pineapple-patterned dress between her knees. She studied Judith, her deep blue eyes traveling the length of Judith’s face, and then tapped Alice on the shoulder. “Don’t forget what I told you.”
Alice nodded without pulling her face out of Judith’s hair.
Judith opened her mouth to thank the girl for finding Alice, for bringing her to Judith, but something in the girl’s expression made her stop. Why was she looking at Judith like she knew her?
The sobbing had slowed, but Judith knew—remembered, damn it—Alice was a painfully shy kid. She saw how it frustrated Meredith, but it was one of Judith’s favorite things about her granddaughter. Shy girls didn’t get in trouble. Shy girls loved harder than girls like Meredith.
“Don’t forget what?” Judith asked, but the girl ignored her. She stood without a word and started back toward the street.
Ignoring the protest in her hips and knees, Judith lifted Alice, tucking the girl’s legs around her waist, a starfish. She put the red-haired girl out of her mind a little too easily. The red-haired girl didn’t matter. Only Alice mattered. They were on the beach. They were going to collect shells. And tonight, the light would be on, and she would be safe. They all would be safe.
***
Judith carried Alice until they reached the far side of the beach, away from the noise of the street. Even with Alice wriggling to be set free, Judith clung to her a moment longer, imagining that she remembered what it felt like to carry Meredith this way. Memories slipping, slipping away, little eels in Alice’s hair as she ran toward the surf. Unfair that Judith couldn’t remember where she was sometimes, or what she was doing, but should someone ask, she could detail every instance of a young Meredith coming in for a hug, how Judith stiffened, her arms limp at her sides. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her daughter. It was that she loved her too much.
Alice took two hesitant steps into the water, her shoes discarded behind her. A wave crept up and then—splash!—Alice shrieked and giggled and danced on tiptoes. Another wave, this one bigger, stronger, which pulled at her legs. Alice stumbled forward—Grandma!—and fear trickled cold down Judith’s back, even colder as she snatched Alice away from a third wave.
“No!” Then, when Alice’s frightened eyes turned on her, softer, “No.”
“But, Grandma—”
“We can’t go in the water, sweetie.”
“Why not?”
“Because we can’t.” Judith took slow, measured breaths, willing her heart to calm. Her husband had died of a heart attack only a few years ago. You’re just afraid, she thought. You’re not dying.
Alice crossed her arms, and her eyes flashed with a challenge. “Mom lets me swim.”
An upturned crab corpse, inches from Alice’s bare feet, caught Judith’s eye. As she scanned the length of the beach, she noticed dozens of them. Several feet away, a pair of boys poked at one with a stick. Birds circled overhead, eyeing the buffet.
Judith nudged the crab with her toe, drawing Alice’s eye. “You want to end up like him?”
Alice shook her head.
“Then we don’t go in the water. Ever.”
After a long moment, Alice nodded. Judith took a deep breath to settle her mind, then goaded Alice into letting Judith show her how to build the perfect moat.
***
Watching Alice play, Judith couldn’t help but scrutinize every movement, every expression, studying her like a particularly difficult poem, written backward in Sanskrit. She was resilient too, the incident with the red-haired girl seemingly put out of her mind. As much as Meredith beat herself up about it, she was doing a fine job of raising her daughter, starting with putting an entire country between them and the cape. She only wished Meredith had stayed away for good.
Tearing herself away from Alice for a minute, she looked back up at the lighthouse. Shadows moved around inside, then Meredith stuck her head out of one of the windows, looking nauseous. Judith shouted up at her, but her voice was swallowed by the crash of the waves and Meredith disappeared back inside. It’d been one of Judith’s more clever ideas, setting Meredith to work in the lighthouse. She’d stay out of trouble there.
Alice ventured dangerously close to the water, jumping back each time Judith took a step toward her. Seemed she was watching Judith just as closely as Judith was watching her.
Somewhere behind her, someone shouted. Judith turned to look and noticed a woman, presumably the mother, jabbing the shoulder of the boy who’d been jabbing one of the dead crabs. When she turned back, Alice was ankle deep in the water with something cradled in her hands.
“Alice! Get back!”
Alice looked up and smiled, her teeth a little crooked and a little too big for her mouth. “I found something.”
Judith’s heart hammered as she scanned the immediate shoreline. She didn’t see her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. “Come show me, then. Come on.” Judith waved her over. “Come show Grandma what you’ve got.”
Alice trotted over, kicking up sand. “It’s pretty, huh?”
Seeing the spiral pink shell in her granddaughter’s hands was like having ice poured down her back. It just fit in the palm of Alice’s hand, every spike, every crevasse exactly the same as it’d been when Meredith found it. When Judith found it years before that. She tried to snatch it out of Alice’s hands, but Alice must’ve seen it coming; she leapt back, nimble as a sprite.
“Give it to me,” Judith ordered. “Now.”
Alice clutched it to her chest. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
She sniffed. Her eyes watered. “But it’s mine, though.”
“Alice.”
She inched backward toward the water, and it became a battle between getting the shell and keeping her out of the water. Each time Judith reached for it, Alice stepped farther away from the shore.
“Please,” Judith said. “Come out of the water.”
“You’re gonna take it.”
“I won’t take it, sweetie.”
“Yes, you will.”
“Alice, please.” Judith shot a look over Alice’s shoulder where she thought she saw a shadow dart under the water. Not again, she thought.
“It’s just a shell, Gramma. I want to show Mom.”
The shadow grew darker. Denser. There wasn’t much time. Swallowing back her fear, Judith ran into the water, flinching as the cold splashed up her legs, and grabbed Alice by the arm. She yanked hard—too hard—and managed to get her a few inches closer to the sand.
“You’re hurting me,” Alice whimpered.
“Just a little closer.” Judith grunted as she looped her arm around Alice’s back and hoisted her onto her hip. Something in her back cracked, and white-hot pain slashed down her side.
Alice must have seen something was wrong because she slid out of Judith’s grip and scampered up the beach, out of Judith’s reach, but out of the water too. Still, Alice held the shell behind her back, a defiant frown on her face.
“Give it to me. Now.” Judith held out her hand, but Alice hid the shell behind her back. Judith breathed. In. Out. Relax. She’s safe. We’re all safe. She knelt, gently stroking Alice’s arms. “Come on, sweetie. Hand it over.”
“But it’s mine!”
Biting back tears, Judith stood. “No. It’s not. Don’t you ever, ever say that.”
She snatched the shell out of Alice’s hands before she could react and hurled it hard enough to make her shoulder pop. She watched it fly, then drop back into the ocean where it belonged.
Don’t you dare.