“There must have been a storm.” Amir peered over the new line of the cliff, unafraid. The strip of sand below was wider than it had been in some places and narrower in others. The waves hurled themselves at the beach. Amir looked sadly backin the direction of the cottage. I knew, without him saying it, that he was wondering how long it would be until all of Horseshoe Cliff was gone.
“Do you remember,” I asked, “why Rei thought this property was named Horseshoe Cliff? ‘It’s theinsideof a horseshoe that is lucky, not the horseshoe itself,’ she’d say. The horseshoe just holds the luck. If you hang a horseshoe upside down, the good stuff spills out like wine from an overturned cup. She thought that whoever named Horseshoe Cliff had believed that it was theoceanthat was lucky, not the land. It was the ocean that would outlast everything else.
“‘This is why the ocean brings us peace,’ Rei said. When we are by the sea, we are in the presence of something eternal. There is strange comfort in feeling small beside the vast ocean. ‘In the face of Forever,’ Rei said, ‘we become more grateful for the vital heartbeat of Now.’”
The light turned Amir’s brown eyes a dark shade of honey. To look at him was to feel his love for me, and—always, always—my love for him.
“The one thing I don’t agree with,” I said, “is the idea that Horseshoe Cliff is unlucky. My father never believed that, and neither do I. Even when I was away, I felt the pull of this land, and of you. I have always felt you with me, Amir, even when you’re not.”
There was so much more I wanted to say, but Amir’s gaze flicked away from mine. His face tightened. Across the bluff, staggering toward us, half broken by the wind, was an old man.
“Who is that?” I asked.
Amir reached for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. “Bear.”
My stomach lurched. The wind made my ears ache. I took a step back, and Amir’s grip tightened around mine.
“Careful,” he said. I had not realized just how close I’d come to the rim of the cliff.
My old impulse to run from Bear was as strong as it had ever been, and it took all of my willpower to remain still as he approached. When he drew closer, I saw that the halting stride I’d mistaken for the gait of an older man was in actuality the stumbling pace of someone who’d had too much to drink. Bear’s flannel shirt hung off his wasted frame. Where was the massive bulk of a man who used to cast such a large shadow? I could not believe how thin he had become, how deeply time was etched upon his forehead. His changed appearance did little to ease my nerves; the Bear I knew would always find a way to seize my joy.
I steeled myself, but when my brother finally arrived at the cliff’s edge, I was shocked to see that his eyes held not knives but tears. With his hollowed cheeks and surprisingly dark beard, he looked so much like my father that I felt shaken. I could not believe he was thirty-five, only a little older than Will.
“What are you doing here?” he said to me. He had slurred for nearly as long as I could remember, but now he spoke as though he had sand in his mouth. It was difficult to understand him.
“We’re here because this place is ours,” said Amir, stepping between us.
Bear glowered. I could see that my brother’s hatred for Amir was still there, even if his tears dampened its intensity. He waved his hand in the air as though Amir’s words were a spiderweb that was easily broken.
“I meanhere. Right here!” He looked at me and blinked, forcing more tears to roll down his cheeks. He seemed confused. “What areyoudoinghere? Don’t stand so close to the edge! How many times do I have to tell you?”
Amir and I exchanged a baffled look. Bear had never once, that I could remember, told me not to do something for fear of my safety. We watched as he began to sway from foot to foot.
“You should know it’s too dangerous. You should know!” He muttered something I could not make out. His lips were wet with tears.
In my entire life, I had never seen Bear cry. The sight ripped something open inside of me.
“Because of Mom?” I asked. He didn’t seem to hear me. The wind was relentless; far below, the crashing waves echoed against the cliffs. I didn’t want to raise my voice, but I did. “Because this is where Mom fell?”
“Mom?” Bear seemed startled. He raked his hands through the mess of his hair and stared at the edge of the cliff and then raised his watery red eyes to meet mine. “She cried all the time. All the time. She didn’t used to, not before you were born.” He looked down again, moving his feet as though the earth were hot below them. “She was happy. I remember her happy. After you were born, she didn’t get out of bed. She held you and shecried all the time. When I hugged her, she would cry. When Dad talked to her, she cried. Her face was different. She had been beautiful. So beautiful.” His voice choked. He looked at me and his face drained of color. I had the sense that he believed, for a moment, that I was our mother. Then he shook his head forcefully, swiping at his tears. His swaying grew more agitated. He began to walk, pacing right to the edge of the cliff he’d warned me away from.
“She went gray after you were born. Her skin, her face, her eyes. All gray.” Below Bear’s feet, rocks skittered out and over the cliff’s edge. My hand shot out and managed to grab his wrist. He shook himself loose of me with more strength than I would have thought he could muster, but he stepped away from the edge of the cliff. His eyes filled with tears faster than he could wipe them. I had never felt as scared of the cliff’s edge as I did in that moment, watching Bear stumble near it.
Amir and I exchanged a glance. It was being reminded of my mother’s tears that had made Bear hate mine so much, I understood now. My birth must have triggered something within her, releasing a dark fog of depression. I wondered why my father—or Rei—had never told me this piece of the story. Perhaps they thought that for a motherless child the story of her mother’s death was simply sad enough on its own, without the details filled in.
“Why don’t we walk back toward the house?” I asked.
Bear blinked at me. “She told me you were going for a walk that day.”
I shook my head. “No. I was a baby. I couldn’t walk yet.”
“You and Mom,” Bear said. “Mom and you. She hadn’t taken a walk in weeks. Dad was in the orchard. She said she was going to take you for a walk, but I...” He trailed off.
“What?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes and I saw a hint of the old daggers in there, dull below his tears. “I didn’t like it. Something about the way she said it.”
“You thought she was going to hurt herself.”
