“As the sun shines low and red across the water, I wade into the ocean. The water is still high and brown and murky with the memory of the storm, so if there’s something below it, I won’t know it. But that’s part of this, the not knowing. The surrender to the possibilities beneath the surface. It wasn’t the ocean that killed my father, in the end. The water is so cold that my feet go numb almost at once. I stretch my arms out to either side of me and close my eyes. I listen to the sound of water hitting water. The raucous cries of the terns and the guillemots in the rocks of the shore, the piercing, hoarse questions of the gulls above me. I smell seaweed and fish and the dusky scent of the nesting birds onshore. Salt coats my lips, crusts my eyelashes. I feel the cold press against my body. The sand shifts and sucks out from under my feet in the tide. I’m perfectly still. The sun is red behind my eyelids. The ocean will not shift me and the cold will not take me.”

“My body rises with the water. Instead of kicking my feet to stay abreast of it, I push all the air from my lungs and sink to the bottom. The water muffles my ears. I feel its movement over my face. I think about snorting the water into my lungs so it kills me faster, but I can't bring myself to do it. I blow bubbles from my mouth. Relax. I close my eyes. My lungs burn.”

“I got up and sprinted into the ocean, chasing my father. I'm in love with the moment when the water switches from being so cold you want to leap up into the air to something that feels just right against your skin.”

“We walked to the edge of the creaky deck. He stood with his chest pressed against my back, arms tight around me. It was cold enough to make my nose hurt, and my feet were frozen, but I wanted to stand right where I was for a long time, breathing in the smell of the ocean. "There's the lighthouse." He pointed. I could just see a tall shadow. Then the light on top blinked. "In the daytime, you can see down to the water.""It's amazing.""We'll come back.Whenever you want."I liked the sound of that.”

“I imagine runningto the creek and diving in headfirst, the creek so shallow that my hands scrape against the rocks, and my bodyslides into the cold water, the shock of the cold giving way to numbness, and I would stay there, float down withthat water first to the Cahaba River, then to the Alabama River, then to Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Underwater, bubbles erupted before my eyes as a swift hand snatched my arm and pulled me to the surface. I gasped for air, coughing and gagging at the amount of water I sucked into my lungs by pure shock. What was up with me and breathing in water? I needed to grow some gills or something.”