Moonglass

shook his head. “Nothing. Just …” I opened my mouth for a rebuttal, but apparently, it wasn’t needed. “Tyler’s a good kid,” he said. “He can come around whenever.” He rubbed the wax on his board quickly, then stood up and motioned at the water. “Get suited up. I’ll be out there.”
    “Okay. I’ll be just a minute. There’s something I need to do first.”
    He nodded, then grabbed his board and headed out. I stood there and watched him paddle out over the morning glass, so calm after such tumult, and when I turned to go up to the house, I thanked him silently, over and over, for being there.
    This time, as I stood at the top of the sagging stairs in her little upstairs room, I felt her there with me. Out the framed window the exposed rocks covered in vibrant green moss stood out against the softness of the beach. The sand had been swept clean; no wood or glass, seaweed or bits of shells. The ocean had washed away everything, leaving behind a calm that spread out in me as I breathed it in. Beyond it all lay the expanse of the ocean, just beginning to sparkle beneath the rising sun as a new day unfurled itself. She’d captured it all perfectly in her frame, and in the pale morning light, it felt like peace.
    I wrapped my quilt around me and ran my eyes over the painted window frame, thinking of the small canvas that now lay on my nightstand. Of the care and grace that she’d taken in her brushstrokes. For me. A brilliant artist, Joy had said. A side of my mother I never knew about, but the side she wanted me to know from the very beginning. And now, standing in the room that was once hers, looking out over the beach she once loved, it felt like I could.
    A small, inside wave breaks, and cool water rushes up around my feet, carving out the sand beneath them as it recedes. I think of her then, and take another step into the water. And this time, as it swirls around my calves, I close my eyes and picture her as I want to remember her .
    We walk the beach together, my little hand closed inside of hers. We are looking for treasures—pieces of glass, broken upon the beach, then smoothed over into more beautiful, softer versions of themselves, gem-like in their beauty. She tells me how the very best ones have been tossed beneath the waves so long they no longer have any sharp edges. I nod seriously, but inside think of how I’d one day like to see the center of one of those smooth pieces, where it’s still clear and pure, because even the ocean can’t shape that .
    When I open my eyes, I look down instinctively, and it’s there, beside my foot. She’s returned it to me. I kneel down and reach with my free hand, through the water just in time to grasp my piece of moonglass before the white water wipes the slate clean. When I hold it up in the morning sun, I can see it has cracked wide open. Split where a hole had been drilled for the chain. And inside it’s the truest, most beautiful red I’ve ever seen .