Guess Who Challenge
The Beach
Fic 2
"Mommy, I want a juice box!"
She smiles at the antics of her four-year old, who's still young enough to enjoy being coddled. "Ok, sweetie" she says, giggling at her daughter's antics--she's built a "sand castle" out of the bucket her grandfather gave her last week and it sits crookedly on the sand.
She takes a deep breath, inhaling the salty air, smelling the smells that one always associates with the beach and with summer. Sand, water, suntan lotion. Tears start to sting in her eyes and rise in her throat, but she ignores them and ruffles the hair on her daughter's head instead. "Cherry ok?"
Her daughter smiles up at her, looking like an angel.
Her own little angel.
She hands her the juice box and watches as her daughter scampers off, ready to dig in the sand yet again.
She smells it again, the suntan lotion, the sea...it brings back memories.
*******
They had finally done it.
Found a measure of happiness, of contentment. After everything. Finally.
She stared at him as they got off the plane, nervous, fearful..but excited.
"This is it" she said. "The beginning of our lives together."
He smiled at her then, that rare, truly happy smile that he got only once in a while. Sometimes, late at night, when her daughter is asleep, dreaming little girl dreams, she thinks about her daughter's smile..how much it is like his, and how frequently she smiles compared to him. His life was never easy. She has promised herself that she would give her daughter, their daughter, the life she deserved. And she has.
They had rented a wreck of house near the water. The sun is very bright, and the water is very blue in the Caribbean, and she felt like they had stumbled onto a small slice of paradise.
They swam, they talked, they made love.
It is the only true happiness she's ever known.
*********************
One night, after they had been there for six months, she told him the news.
He cried when she told him. Alarmed, she ran over and threw her arms around him.
"Don't you want the baby?" she had cried. The thought of their child filled her with an inner peace she had never known. They had done it. They were a family.
He had looked up, and the expression his face made her heart contract.
"It's more than I ever dreamed of" he said. "This life, our life, it's so perfect..and now a baby--do you think a person can die of happiness Michelle?"
She laughed and hugged him. "Of course not, silly" she said. "I'd have died a long time ago if that was true!"
He grabbed her hand and pulled her out onto the beach. "We have to celebrate" he whispered in her ear, and she shivered. No matter how many times they came together, she never could get enough of him.
They walked out onto the beach, hand and hand, talking about the future.
*******************
He was dead before he hit the sand.
Whoever shot him, and to this day, she doesn't know who it was, knew what they were doing.
They never saw it coming.
They were facing each other in the moonlight, laughing and talking, and she had looked up at the moon.
It was enormous and dominated the sky. "It looks like you could reach out and touch it" she said, and then laughed at her own whimsy.
She turned and looked at him--his eyes were bright, and there were tears in them.
"Baby, I'm sorry" he said.
And then he fell on the sand.
She saw the hole in his chest, saw the blood on the sand. Then she fainted.
When she came to, she was in the hospital. She screamed when they told her. Screamed so loudly and for so long that the doctors became worried, and gave her a sedative.
She had him cremated, and scattered his ashes in the ocean.
For a time, she hated the baby. If it wasn't for the baby, she would, could, die and be with him again. But the baby-- always moving, always kicking, kept reminding her that she was alive.
During her labor, she never screamed. She just cried.
Afterwards, she heard one of the nurses tell the doctor "That's the saddest woman I've ever seen."
****************
They had placed the baby in her arms and she had looked down at it, expecting to feel nothing.
But the baby, her baby--Danny's baby, had her father's eyes.
And she was lost.
******************
He's been dead for over four years now.
She lives in a small town in Florida, where she works as a midwife.
A widow and her daughter.
She never dates.
Occasionally, she takes out his picture.
She looks over at her daughter.
She doesn't really need the picture, she thinks. She has the living legacy of their love.
She smiles and calls her daughter over.
The End