Page 3 of Every Beautiful Mile

We’re at the ladder—he drags me up. My soaked dress clings to my legs like a wetsuit, ripped fabric drooping heavily off my chest.

Gabe bends over next to me in his dripping wet clothes, hands on his knees, panting.

“Jesus Christ, Nel! What the hell are you doing?” He spits the words out as he looks at me, blood running down his face. “You pulled that stunt back at the church, and now this?” He jerks to a stand and points to the water we were just swimming in. “You could’ve died!”

He shakes his head and rubs his forearm under his nose. The bright red blood spreads across his soaked white shirt and stains.

Looking at my brother, I don’t feel a drop of guilt, only rage.

“You!” I grit my teeth, jabbing a finger into his chest. “You did this! You and everyone else in that goddamned church! You gave up—all of you!” My voice cracks, fresh tears streaming down my face making him look like a blurry blob. “It’s barely been two weeks, and you’re just going to give up?” Every single word burns my mouth. “Who has a funeral without a body, Gabe?” I demand, voice loud. “He’s out there, waiting for us!”

He's silent.

A group of tourists on a boat tied to a nearby dock in the marina point and stare. A woman—wearing a wetsuit with goggles on top of her head—points a cell phone in my direction, recording me.

I smile coldly through my mascara-stained face as I raise both fists and wave my middle fingers.

Assholes.

People from the church are here.

My mom is on the dock next to me.

Where did she come from?

“Honey, you’re scaring me,” she says softly.

Nothing makes sense, but I lean into her anyway. She’s the only thing holding me upright while my entire life washes away like grains of sand in an outgoing tide.

“Mom, why?” I ask in a hoarse whisper. “Why won’t anyone help me find him?”

“Shhhhh.” My mom hushes me as she gently rubs my back. “He’s gone, Penelope, he’s gone.”

I want to argue. I desperately want to scream the words I know are true, but they don’t come. Somewhere between the blurred lines of grief, anger, and smoke-flavored liquor, I know my mom is right.

The scream that comes next is a throat-shredding, ear-piercing sound that takes me to my knees and drains me of my ability to breathe or think. I don’t notice my kids crying beside me or the car that shows up to take me away.

The only thing I know at this moment, the only thing I’ll ever know again, is my husband of seventeen years is gone.

One

One year later...

I stare at a pelican sitting on a post and focus on my breathing. Inhale for four, exhale for four. Yet another bullshit technique I read about in one of the many books on loss I was given after Travis… After Travis.

Except I’m not trying to breathe through loss. I’m breathing through a conversation with a man who is very much in front of me. As per usual, breathing doesn’t work.

“Say that again, Dad, because it sounds a lot like you hurling insults at me for no damn reason.”

My teeth grind as a headache thumps at my temples.

He runs a hand through his more gray-than-blond slicked-back hair with a heavy sigh.

“Nelly, we’ve been trying to say this for a year in the nicest way, but you refuse to listen, forcing me to be blunt. You’re stuck—unhappy—and you need to do something about it.”

My mouth opens, then snaps close.

As we sit in my dad’s office of the day—a table he randomly selected under the large palm frond thatched roof of his restaurant—I’m speechless.

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