There in front of us, closing in on an unclear horizon, is an autumn sun, reddening every ripple out there in the ocean, every little wrinkle here on the shore, and casting endless shadows, shadows made of vapor and dust, which seem to be flowing along, right over the surface.
We stand side by side. We smell the salt in the air. We step off the paved boardwalk and into the soft sand. All the while, I am listening to myself thinking. Slapped by a sudden backwash of emotion, I realize that just now, for the first time in years, something has changed in me: I have said something quite unusual, which came about without planning—but also, without regret. Three times I have named him and me, bringing the two together into a single word: becoming one, as in We.
For just a minute I lean on my father, to fold up my pant legs, take off my shoes and roll my socks in them. Then he leans on me, to do the same.
We cross the border between the wind-blown mounds of dry sand, and the saturated, nearly flat seaboard, trounced by the tide. The waves roll in, threatening to swallow us whole. With a roar in their widening mouth, they are leaping ahead, then lapping the sand angrily, foam on their lip.
And scattered here all around us—going away this way and that, across moist and dry land—are traces: footprints of things big and small. You can figure out what they might have been, by that which they have taken away, by what has gone missing, and how.
★ Love reading? Treat yourself to a family saga ★
The complete series:
Volume II:
Volume I & II, woven together:
Few authors would be able to pull off the manner in which the apparent polar opposites of Ben and Anita begin to bond... but Poznansky has the visual and verbal and architectural skills to create this maze and guide us through it.
~Grady Harp, HALL OF FAME reviewer
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