One
It was a boundlessly blue-skied September, the fall after her divorce, and Adelaide had no idea how she’d ended up on that beach.
She sat cross-legged, facing the water, a notepad in her lap and an empty wine bottle propped in the sand at her elbow. A breeze lifted the pile of crumpled papers next to her and she swatted them down.
Why was this so hard? The book made it sound effortless. It was literally step one: write down your greatest fear.
Her sister Sheila hadn’t recommended the book to her. Addy had found it on a shelf, its muted cover calling to her with a single word from the title, a siren call:MIDLIFE.
Surely by forty-eight she should be able to admit her greatest fear. If not her greatest, at least the top three. It rolled around in her head for days. She was sure once she focused on the question, she would figure it out with ease.
Yet here she sat, with nothing but the birds above her and what might have been a harbor seal peeking its nose above the water from afar. The cool air stung her lungs, but she breathed deeply anyway, savoring the pure ocean air.
She stared at the notepad, down at the scrawled list of things that had already happened to her. Divorce. Losing the
beacon of her life, her father. Being laid off from the university. Her mother walking out on them as kids. The bittersweet moment of her daughter taking off to college, starting her own adventure.
Addy’s handwriting was wild and looped, like she was racing toward the answer, but all she had was a list of abandonments. Her greatest fear wasn’t being abandoned. If anything, she was a pro at getting left behind. A gold medalist – or at least silver.
The edges of her greatest fear were stark in her mind, but she couldn’t see the fear itself. It sat perched in the darkness, watching over her with black eyes.
She looked up. The sea glittered under the sun, and the trees in the distance stood like bursts of green joy. Two months on San Juan Island and she’d still managed not to take it for granted. The cool, clean air. The scent of pine needles on her early morning walks. The soft lapping of waves on the rocky shore.
Her fear, the dogged thing, didn’t feel welcome to join.
The sun pressed into her skin and she closed her eyes. It should be easy. It should be obvious. Addy’s life was full of fear. Full of worries – worrying about doing the wrong thing or making the wrong choice, being punished by ending up in the wrong place.
All her life, she believed if she lived within the prickling bounds of her fears, lived within the rules, life would reward her. The Bad Things wouldn’t happen, and she would be happy and whole.
She opened her eyes. None of it worked. Even after following every rule, and spending years tossing in twisted covers with a racing heart, the Bad Things happened anyway.
She’d lost people, relationships. She’d lost security.
She’d lost herself.
Yet how could she complain? Here she was, on this beautiful day, staring at a vast and endless ocean. She wasalive.Those fried nerves felt it with every kiss of breeze.
Death didn’t scare her. Not exactly. Statistically, she had almost an entire new lifetime ahead of her – another four decades.
Her heart dropped and sweat sprung beneath her sweater. Her best years were behind her. What would she do with another forty years?
What would she do with another forty yearsalone?
The beast in her mind cackled a low, rumbling laugh, and finally she got her glimpse. She snatched the pen into her hand, the words dancing across the page like a bird dipping its wings into the water.Will anyone ever love me again?
There it was. Her fear wasn’t as simple as her best years passing her by. Her fear shouted that everyone else saw it, too. Wife, mother, and then what? There was nothing left to love. Only something to be discarded.
She wasused up.
The fear, disgusting as it was, lost half its power by being named. Her hands moved swiftly, the salted air buoying in her chest as she folded the paper into a square. She shoved it into the bottle, then pressed in the cork.
Addy walked to the water’s edge, the low waves touching the tips of her boots, and drew her arm back. The bottle rose above her head and she snapped it forward, a crack ringing out from her shoulder.
“Ack!”
The bottle splashed in front of her as Addy grasped her shoulder.
Aggravating an old shoulder injury.That should’ve been her greatest fear. She wouldn’t be able to lift her arm for a month. Maybe two.
