Prologue

Her head rests against the floral-patterned canvas of a low-slung beach chair as she flicks away the sweat that’s gathered in the crevice of her belly button like a small tidal pool, validating how long she’s been here. She then lifts her sunglasses and pokes at the fair skin on her now slightly soft and freckled stomach, the pink giving way to a blanched white beneath each finger. And as her thumb rubs against the long, flat scar still peeking just above her bikini line, she wonders if there’s ever a chance of it fading away completely.

    Before its late afternoon calm, the wind takes one last heavy sigh and catches a wisp of her silvery blonde hair. As she tucks it behind her ear, she admires how the opal ring lined with the tiniest of diamonds holds the same colors as the sea. Funny how she’s never noticed that before. She moves her finger so it dances and sparkles in her Carolina sun—the memory of him placing it on her finger becoming as clear as the sky is blue. Then an unexpected rush of tears fills her eyes and reminds her of the inescapable task at hand.

    With one quick tug, she manages to free her chair from its sucking grip in the sand and carries it to the dunes where she’s left her beach bag. Inside, the unopened package looms in the bottom with the weighted dread of a box of rocks. She slings the heavy load over her shoulder before slipping her feet into the sandals she left by the boardwalk. These afternoon trips to the beach are a ritual, and a necessary routine to keep her from going down the rabbit holes of her past.

    Most people would agree that fate originally brought such a troubled young woman to live in Charleston, South Carolina. Others would say it’s nature’s way of making the world right again. Whatever it is, she’s still here over forty years later, living in possibly the oldest beach house on Sullivan’s Island and selectively painting portraits of local children as art therapy for all she’s lost.

But it’s the memories that therapy could never heal. Memories, tied to the stories that held each one together, consuming her until she released them on paper. Words rushed from her soul like a raging river while she divulged every important detail of those defining years of her life and the lives of those she loved the most. She placed the manuscript in a wooden box and kept it beneath her bed, believing she simply needed to write it all down. But the box became her nemesis with the strength and fierceness of a longshore current.

    Then a day came when she released her memories to the world like she would a captured butterfly she’d been holding delicately in her hands—freeing her stories with no remorse and without reading one word of what she’d written so long ago.