Alarm

“You’re what?”

“Like President Clinton,” I explained. “I tried it once in college, but as soon as I inhaled, I just started coughing. I didn’t bother to try again.”

Aiden chuckled briefly and then went quiet as he stared out at the teen on the beach. I finished my coffee and set the glass on the patio table with a slight thump. Aiden turned his head to the sound and then looked at me.

“So what would you like to do today?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ve never been to Miami. What is there to do around here?”

“Everything,” Aiden replied. He stood up, affixed his red cap on his head, and reached for my hand. “A morning beach walk is a good place to start.”

We left our shoes on the patio and walked barefoot through the sand until we reached the edge of the water. The overnight tide had left chunks of coral and shells all over the sand, and I bent down to pick up a small, pink shell.

“Are you one of those seashell collectors?” Aiden asked.

“Yes,” I said with a blush. “When I was I kid, we would go to Myrtle Beach every couple of years. I always came back with a huge bag of them.”

“The pickings are a little slim around here,” he said. “There’s a sandbar about a hundred feet out, so most of the shells end up out there. There are some nice corals that make it this far.”

He was right about the lack of variety though there were plenty of tiny clamshells. I found a few pieces of what might have been oysters, but they were too broken to tell for sure. I kept a few of the more colorful ones in one hand as we strolled along the edge of the water.

“I think I see a good one.” I released Aiden’s hand and walked a few feet into the cold water to retrieve it. It was a little bigger than the ones I had seen on the shore and had green and blue all over the inside. The waves washed over my feet, disturbing the sand and revealing other shells. I bent over and pulled them out, too.

There was something about shell collecting that had always calmed me. The waves brushing over my feet had a nearly hypnotic effect, and I walked a little farther out to see what else I could find. The warmth of the wind countered the coolness of the water, making a perfect combination.

A gull swooped by and squawked, pulling me out of my shell-searching trance. I looked up, but Aiden wasn’t at the edge of the water any longer. I looked up and down the beach and finally saw him crouched near a mound of sand. I rubbed the sand off the shell and walked over to find him holding a small, green plastic shovel. He was staring at it intently, and his eyes seemed far away.

“What have you got there?” I asked.

Aiden jumped slightly before tossing the shovel back into the sand and standing.

“Nothing,” he replied. He looked at me and smiled. “Some kid left his shovel on the beach. You still collecting shells?”

“I found some really pretty ones,” I said.

He checked out my treasure.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“I have no idea.” I laughed. “I think I was always more about the collecting than making any use out of them. I’ve probably brought thousands home but never even glued them to a picture frame. I think Mom ended up throwing them out when she moved.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She threw out a lot of stuff, mostly my dad’s things. It was too much for her to try to move it all across the country.”

I squinted into the sunlight, remembering Mom’s face as she boxed up Dad’s clothes to take them to the Salvation Army. She’d remained stoic throughout the day, but it only took one glass of wine at dinner for her to melt down that evening.

“She got rid of all his things?” Aiden asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Well, except for a few keepsakes. I held on to some of the things that reminded me of him—mostly books and the little silver tray he always had on his dresser. He kept his watch and change on it.”

Aiden nodded, but his expression was strained.

“I don’t know how she did it,” Aiden said quietly. “Going through someone’s things like that and then getting rid of them all, everything they owned—it’s like it’s a part of them.”

“You have to,” I said. “Moving forward is part of the grieving process. If you don’t move forward, how do you ever get through the loss?”

Aiden looked at me for a long moment before he spoke.