Chapter Thirty-Five

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I didn’t think I had a destination in mind, but soon, I found myself parking my bike near a rocky cove near the water. The sea always calmed me. Its homicidal anger made me feel like I was mellow in comparison.

I climbed down the rocks, careful not to slip and knock myself out. The way my day was going, that was a fairly likely scenario. Something reached out with soft, black tentacles, and I kicked it with my boot.

“Uninvited,” I told it. It withdrew.

Mom had also loved the sea. It’s one of the only things we had in common. She was soft and delicate with a quiet, gentle voice, not like me at all. She was everything I wished I had been.

She had died when Seth and I were still pretty young. Cancer. It didn’t creep up on her like you always hear about. It came hard and swift and took her almost before we realized it. So fast she didn’t have time to harden. She just wilted like a flower without enough water. Strangely beautiful and tragic at the same time.

Someth