Page 27 of The Magic of Sea Glass
“You found a piece of sea glass,” Mary said from behind her on the walkway, pulling her from her memories.
“I thought that’s what it was,” she said, comparing it to the beads on her bracelet as she stood up to face Mary.
Mary leaned over Lauren’s hand, examining the stone. “The salt in the water is what gives it that frosted look.” Plucking it out of her palm, Mary flipped it over between her fingers. “By its green color, I think it might have started as a soda bottle.” She handed it back.
Lauren rolled it around in her fingers. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Yes. And I consider the owner lucky to find such a piece.”
Lauren slipped the glass into her pocket and turned her attention to Mary. “Why’s that?”
“Because the whole process makes it almost impossible for that one shard of glass to end up in the palm of your hand.” She grabbed Lauren’s arm and guided her down the walkway toward the inn. “A bottle has to be abandoned and shattered—completely lost—and then each piece is gathered up, caressed, and meticulously smoothed by the ocean. It takes years—sometimes ahundredyears—to etch the glass into the smooth shape you find on the beach.” She let go of Lauren, her cane wobbling on the uneven planks of wood under their feet. “The nature of it alone makes it feel like hope from a broken past, to me.”
“A broken past…” Lauren said, the memory of her engagement coming back into focus once more. She pushed it out of her mind.
Mary took hold of the railing to keep herself steady. “It’s as if the universe is rooting for you and leaving a message of hope in your path.”
“That’s a nice idea,” Lauren said. “But that notion of something beyond us, cheering for us and guiding our way, just doesn’t seem possible to me most of the time.”
“So we have a skeptic.” Mary gave her a knowing wink.
“I like to think that I’m more of a realist,” Lauren corrected her.
Mary stopped walking and faced her. “Can I let you in on a little secret?”
Lauren turned her head to keep the warm wind from blowing her hair into her face. “Of course.”
“Life’s little treasures are only visible to the ones who are open enough to see them.”
Lauren rolled those words around in her mind. She hoped the idea to be true. “So then,” she said as Mary resumed walking once more, “have you ever received a gift like that?”
“All the time,” Mary replied, so matter-of-fact that Lauren almost believed in her crazy idea of messages for a second.
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, when my husband, Frank, passed away, I had no idea how to be… my own person.”
A wave of understanding crashed over Lauren. She saw herself in Mary and wondered if the emptiness that she felt now would still be with her when she was Mary’s age.
“I’d spent nearly fifty years as half ofus.” Mary squinted toward the ocean. “If we went out to dinner, he always ordered for me because he remembered my favorite dishes at each restaurant longer than I did.” Her gaze moved up to the bright blue sky as if the memory were playing out above her. “One day, on the advice of a concerned acquaintance, I went to one of those restaurants by myself to try to enjoy something Frank and I had shared together. But I stared helplessly at the menu, tears welling up—not because I was alone, but because I missed my best friend.”
Lauren cleared her throat, grief swelling in it.Yes, she wanted to say, but it was stuck inside her, locked within, unable to come out.
“My hands were trembling, so I set the menu down. That was when I noticed the quarter on the floor. It was on tails. I picked it up and said it out loud:Tails. And then I remembered that Frank always ordered me the lobster tail there, because I loved the dipping sauce that came with it.”
Lauren smiled for Mary’s benefit, taking in the woman’s honest expression. She was pretty sure that it had been just a lovely coincidence. But without warning, before she could suck the words back in, she heard herself say, “The way you felt at the restaurant—I feel like that all the time.” She bit her lip to keep it from wobbling. “I lost my fiancé.” The words had finally come unstuck and tumbled out.
“My dear child,” Mary said, her eyes becoming glassy. “How?”
“It was a car wreck. We kept it private, out of the public eye.”
Mary shook her head, eyes wide, both her sympathy and surprise clear. “The pain doesn’t go away,” she said, her hand on her heart. “But the love they had for you doesn’t either. You just have to learn which one you want to breathe into your lungs every day.”
“I’m not even there yet,” Lauren said. “I always feel like I’m suffocating.” She turned back toward the shore, closing her eyes for a moment and letting the air coming off the ocean blow against her face to keep from crying. “I came here to try to escape it, but I think it’s always going to be a part of me.”
“Yes, it will, but it does get easier. I mentioned before that that’s how I got so close to Joe. He was a kind shoulder when Frank passed away. Joe has experienced loss as well at a young age, and he was a supportive person. He guided me through it.”
Lauren couldn’t help but compare how she’d met Brody at a similar time in her own life. But his purpose wasn’t to teach her about loss—what did he know about that? While he was a kind person, she was on her own with this.
