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chapter 06
From my hidden vantage point, I watch the little girl run down the beach, her white-blonde hair streaming like a bleached flag behind her. She’s pretending to be a plane, or a bird perhaps: her arms are stretched wide as she swoops and dives across the sand.
No one is with her. No one is watching her.
Except me.
The little girl stops suddenly, plopping down on her fat bottom in the sand. She tugs off her sandals and flings them into the sea, laughing with delight as the tide quickly whips them away. It’s hard not to smile, watching her. She is still young enough to be unfettered byshouldandought. She’s impulsive, living in the moment. She skips joyfully along the beach in her bare feet, her skirts flapping wetly around her calves, and I wonder briefly at what age we stop skipping and surrender to the pedestrian discipline of walking and running.
I’m glad she’s having fun now, because I know she’ll be frightened when I take her. I can’t help that, but I’ll make sure it’s all over as quickly as I can.
The child veers closer to the shoreline, oblivious to my presence as I emerge from the rocks behind her, and I quell my instinct to pull her back from the water’s edge and tell her to be careful, that the tide is stronger than it looks. Life is dangerous. If she doesn’t know that by now, she soon will.
And the biggest threat to her doesn’t come from the sea.
It comes from me.
