Why am I going to Grandma Betty’s?” Bella asked.

“Just to visit while I run an errand, okay?”

“Yeah, I love being at her house,” Bella said, giggling. “She gives me chocolate.”

“She does?” I asked, pulling into the driveway of my mother’s house. “Well, that explains so much.”

My mother was standing in the doorway smiling as I pulled Bella from the car and let her loose. She ran through the yard and up the steps to give her a big hug. I grabbed Bella’s bag that she had packed herself, which was probably filled with stuffed animals and a crayon, and walked across the yard. My mom put Bella down and told her to go inside and get the movie ready. When Bella disappeared out of sight, my mother turned back to me and crossed her arms.

“What is this all about?” she asked with a smirk. “I’m not used to you needing to go do something that has to do with a woman.”

“How do you know it has to do with a woman?”

“You’re wearing cologne,” she pointed out.

“I need to tell Lacey what happened to Isabella,” I said. “I care about her, and I’m going to lose her if I don’t start opening up to her.”

“Good,” she replied. “I think this will be good for you, and not just because Lacey is so awesome, but because you need to be able to open up about what happened, start shedding some of that pain and guilt.”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know I’m not ready to push Lacey away,” I said.

“Last week, I saw Lacey at Aggie’s, and she sat down for lunch with me,” she said, surprising me. “I really just adore that girl. She has the biggest heart I have ever seen, and part of that heart belongs to you. You’ve made the first step toward treating her right. Don’t mess it up.”

“I know, I’m trying not to,” I said with a chuckle. “I have to go. She’s waiting at the school.”

“Good luck,” my mother said, smiling.

I drove over to the public beach access closest to the surf shop. We had built the building on stilts on a section of beach that the town allowed us to purchase. As I walked toward the building, I could see Lacey standing there, looking out over the water. A storm was blowing in, and the clouds were sitting right on the edge of the horizon, dark and gray just like the day Isabella had died. The wind blew Lacey’s hair around wildly, but her smile calmed my heart as I approached.

“Hey,” I said, rubbing my hand down her arm.

“Hey there,” she whispered.

“So, this is the surf shop,” I said, climbing the stairs. “The place I did all my best thinking, the business that made it possible for me to be home with Bella like I am now, and also a place that holds a lot of painful and good memories for me. It has survived two hurricanes and a tropical storm.”

“Did you build it?” Lacey asked.

“We did, Isabella and I,” I said. “Isabella was my wife’s name.”

She nodded her head and followed me to the front door, looking over the edge of the deck out into the ocean. I fumbled with my keys, trying to remember which one opened up the front door, and when I saw the small purple heart painted on the front of key, I remembered. Isabella had done that because I would sometimes sit there forever trying to figure out what key went in the door. My heart started to hurt a bit, but it lifted as Lacey’s hand smoothed over my shoulder. We walked inside, and I flipped on the lights.

“The whole place is powered by solar in an attempt to lessen our environmental footprint, especially out here on the beach,” I explained, walking her over to the wall of pictures in the shop area where we sold minor surfing gear, some lotions, board butter, and wet suits. “This is the wall of photos of our students.”

“Wow,” she said wide-eyed, making me smile.

“That is Ellie-Jean Coffey, a famous surfer, and this is Sage Erickson, also a famous surfer,” I said, pointing to a couple of pictures. “The rest of them are students who have come through. Not all of them, of course, but the ones that came more than once.”

“That’s awesome,” she said, walking along the wall and stopping at a picture of me and Isabella laughing on the beach.

“That is Isabella and me when we first started the shop,” I said, looking at the picture.

“She is so beautiful,” Lacey said.

“She was,” I replied. “She passed away over two years ago.”

“Caspian,” Lacey said, covering her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

“This place was her baby,” I said, turning and walking through the shop, stopping to sit up on the counter. “Sure, we opened it together and I ran the classes, but she put everything she had into this place. It never seemed like it was a bother or stress to her, no matter whether the numbers were up or down. She would have lived here if she could have. There was a hammock out on the deck she used to nap in when she was pregnant with Bella. It blew out to sea during a storm.”

I looked around the room for a moment, remembering all the old surf boards that we had hung in the rafters. The place was dusty, but I could still make out every foot that walked through the place. I realized in that moment that I loved the place as much as Isabella had. I looked over at Lacey, who was standing in the middle of the floor staring up at me. I jumped down and took her by the hand, leading her over to a table by the window. We sat down, and I took her hands in mine.

“I didn’t come here to show you the shop, though,” I said. “I came here because it is part of the story. Surfing was part of the story. The story goes, my wife had been surfing her whole life and even traveled around the world for a year surfing some of the greatest spots imaginable. She had very little fear. There was a storm off the coast, and while it was producing some really great swells that day, it was also producing one of the worst rip currents we had seen out here. There was no stopping Isabella, though, and as she hit the peak of the wave, she was knocked off her board. I can remember seeing her face—she was laughing—but then she disappeared under the water, and that was the last time I saw her alive. We searched and searched but her body didn’t wash up for three days. Obviously, there was nothing they could do.”

“That is so tragic,” Lacey said, squeezing my hands. “I’m so sorry for that.”

“The part that most people don’t know is that Isabella and I argued about it before she went out that day,” I said, putting my head down. “I told her it was too dangerous, that it wasn’t some trophy to be surfed. I told her she was a mother now, and she couldn’t take such crazy chances for no reason. It was an argument, and she stormed out, stubborn as hell, and grabbed her board. My last words to her were ‘whatever,’ and it has haunted me ever since then.”

I let go of Lacey’s hands and sat back in my chair, staring out the window. I hadn’t told any part of that story since she died, and it was all running through my mind like a movie. I watched the waves violently clash against the shore as the storm clouds moved closer. It was exactly like that day, and the seagulls outside, grabbing the fish drawn to shore by the churning of the ocean, rang loudly in my ears. I could still see my mother with Bella clutched in her arms, running up the beach toward the shack, a look of absolute terror on her face. I could feel the sting of the cold water hitting me as I raced out there, following the cord of her surfboard but finding nothing at the end of it. My heart fluttered in my chest reliving that desperation, that powerless feeling as I dove in and out of the surf, trying to find her.

The wind whipped against the side of the shop, drawing me from my daydream. That was exactly why I didn’t tell the story or come to the shop. It made me relive that day over and over in my mind. It was a day that was forever burned into my brain, something I felt extraordinarily guilty over.

“I’m so sorry, Caspian,” Lacey said quietly. “But it isn’t something that you can blame yourself for.”

“If I had just sat down and talked to her or gone out with her,” I said. “If I was on the beach watching even, I would have been thirty steps closer. That’s thirty extra seconds to dive in and pull her out of the current. She died knowing I was angry with her, my bitter words in her heart.”

“No, every couple argues,” Lacey said. “She knew how much you loved her. Blaming yourself will never solve anything. It will only keep making this something you cannot move on from.”

“I do blame myself,” I said quietly. “I can’t help it. My heart won’t let it go.”

“Your heart is just reacting to your brain,” she replied. “You need to forgive yourself, for you and for Bella.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” I said, raising my arms over my head. “But I should be getting back before the storm hits. Bella gets scared during storms.”

“Alright,” Lacey said, taking my hand and standing up.

“I’ll give you a lift home, so you don’t get rained on,” I said, smiling.

“It’s alright,” she replied. “I need the exercise, and I want to clear my mind. Go get Bella. That can’t wait.”

I nodded my head, trying to understand that I just unloaded a lot of really big information on Lacey. She took it really well, not overstepping, not getting overly emotional, but caring enough to make me feel comforted. The whole experience wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I was glad that she pushed my hand on the subject. I wasn’t looking forward to the gloom it would bring the rest of the day, but it was something that I had to live with. We closed up the shop and headed down to the sand where we stood looking at each other. She walked forward and leaned up, kissing me gently on the cheek.

“You are an amazing man and a fantastic father,” she whispered. “You are no more at fault for your wife’s death than the ocean is. It was tragic and terrible, and I know you are heartbroken, but in order to heal, you have to start to forgive yourself. You want your daughter to see that vibrant and happy man that you can be, and that will only happen if you let go of that guilt. The rest will fall into place, and even though you will always miss her, your heart will begin to heal. I promise. I never lost a husband, but I did lose two people that were the most important people in my life, and for a long time, I just kept thinking that if I had come home, my grandmother might have still been alive. I had to understand that no matter what I did, everything would have ended up the same way. It was the universe controlling it, not us.”

She kissed me on the cheek again and turned, walking away down the beach. My brain knew she was right, but my heart was still fighting. All I could do then was try to move forward, and maybe if I was lucky, I could move forward with Lacey in my life.