Page 28 of Unspoken Tides

She was too late.

Hilary brought her suitcases back to her mother’s bedroom and removed a pair of shorts, a tank top, and her tennis shoes. It was a clear, warm day. She felt doomed to mummify in that house if she didn’t feel the sunshine on her skin.

Hilary started walking down the beach. She had a water bottle and a book in her backpack, but she was underfed and underslept, and she was very aware that she wouldn’t make it long. Still, she strode on, the muscles in her legs screaming for fuel. She remembered that when her mother was trying to lose weight for a role in the early eighties, her doctor had prescribed her speed. Speed! Times had changed so much. Hilary let out a sob and collapsed onto a long log facing the ocean. It was a different breed than the Pacific, angrier and colder. She loved its darkness. It suited her.

As tears striped her cheeks, Hilary considered what she could do with herself. How could she spend her days? How could she heal? She’d once craved days by herself, days of thinking and reading. Now, they felt torturous.

From far down the beach came the sound of a barking dog. Hilary stiffened and gazed out over the sands as a golden retriever swept toward her. The dog leaped into the air just in the nick of time to nab a red Frisbee, then cut around to return it to the owner. The woman who took the Frisbee back was dressed in a sports bra and running shorts, and her blond hair whipped out behind her like a flag.

Having been around film and stories for so long, Hilary immediately imagined what her backstory could be. Maybe she was a professional dog trainer. Perhaps she was a surfer. She certainly had the hair for it. Maybe she was on the run from the law and had built a little beach shelter for herself on the other side of this bluff. Probably not. But anything was possible if you imagined it.

Not long afterward, the woman was close enough for Hilary to see the strain on her face. Just like Hilary, she was crying. Hilary stood with surprise. It had been so long since she’d seen someone who echoed her own sorrow. It was like seeing a moose in the wild.

The woman stopped walking, too. The dog whipped around her in circles, eyes on the Frisbee, aching for her to throw it again. But the woman just looked at Hilary, just as awestruck as Hilary felt.

Hilary asked, “Are you all right?” Her voice nearly disappeared in the wind.

The other woman laughed through her tears. “Are you?”

“That’s a complicated question.”

“Same,” the woman said.

The woman took a step toward Hilary, and Hilary surprised herself by gesturing toward her log. “Do you want to sit down for a second?”

The woman walked barefoot through the sand and planted herself on the log beside Hilary. The dog hurried forward, pink tongue lolling, and collapsed in front of them, facing the ocean. Hilary petted the dog’s head, then stroked it all the way down its back.

“Beautiful,” she breathed, a frog still in her throat.

“His name is Jasper,” the woman said.

“Handsome,” Hilary corrected.

The woman smiled. Hilary guessed she was a little bit younger than Hilary, maybe thirty. You were not too young to understand the weight of the world and the ways in which it disappointed you.

For a minute or two, Hilary and the stranger cried quietly and watched the water. The pressure on Hilary’s chest dissipated just a bit. For the moment, her loneliness was gone.

It was her first opportunity to speak to someone who wasn’t the woman who worked at the grocery store or the maid her mother had hired to clean the Nantucket house. She told herself to take advantage of it.

“Where are you walking to?” Hilary asked.

“I don’t know. I’m walking aimlessly. You?”

“Same. But I’ve never come this far down the beach. It feels like I’ve been walking for hours.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Siasconset,” Hilary said.

Her eyes widened. She clearly knew that Siasconset was where the ultra-rich of the island lived. Hilary wondered if she recognized her for having Isabella Helin’s face. But right now, it was blotchy and tear-soaked. She probably looked like Isabella's very distant cousin at best.

“And you?” Hilary asked.

“I live back there,” the woman said, gesturing vaguely behind her. “In a little house. It’s enough for Jasper and me.”

“Are you an islander?”

“I am,” the woman said. “Born and raised.”

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