Sitting beneath the pale moonlight, Tessa and I watched the hungry waves lap at the shore. And for a few moments it seemed like we had always known each other, that she really was my daughter, that I really was her father, and that we had a lifetime of shared memories stored up someplace, ready to take us through whatever rough times might lay ahead.
But the feeling lasted only a moment. Then it was gone. Sea mist entwined us and the cold spaces between the distant stars landed on the beach all around us. I felt a chill. Maybe it was the wind. Maybe it was the deep night creeping slowly up the shore.
“I’m getting cold,” Tessa said.
“Me too,” I said. “Let’s go. It’s still a long walk back to the car.”
As we stood, she gazed at the world’s only ocean one last time.
“Being here, right now, with the wind and the night and everything.
It reminds me of something I read once.”
“What’s that?”
She gave the moonlit waves a steady, thoughtful stare. “‘It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty.’” And then, looking toward me, she added, “Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher.”
“That’s eerie,” I said. “And beautiful too.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It is. It’s both.”
I thought for a moment about reaching over and putting my hand on her shoulder, but I decided not to. The wind blew salty gusts in from the ocean, and somewhere above us a gull screeched its way through the night. For a moment, the gull’s cry sounded like a human scream stretched out across the water.
Like a woman’s scream echoing off the concrete floor of a slaughterhouse.
I reached into my pocket, and as I pulled out the car keys, I remembered where I’d placed them on the table, behind the salad bowl.
“Come on,” I said. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“What’s that?”
“The future.”