Sublime

filled with the kind of determined cheer that masked a deeper despair.

Then she stood and lifted the stool carefully off Benny, who continued to sit there, looking somewhat wobbly and exposed, like Jell-O taken too soon from the mold.

Without the light from the moon, the night was so dark he could barely make out the trees until he was almost bumping into them.

The sea was always heaving things up and hurling them back: fishing lines, floats, beer cans, plastic toys, tampons, Nike sneakers. A few years earlier it was severed feet. People were finding them up and down Vancouver Island, washed up on the sand. One had been found on this very beach.