THE FULL MOON illuminated the beach like an amphitheater. Smooth and glistening shells and bits of stone reflected the light, twinkling like earth stars. On the ocean, white ruffled waves stretched farther up the beach as the tide rose.
Cara sat on Lovie’s dune and gazed out at the sea as she did most nights. Her head was filled with images and memories of the summer she had fallen in love with Brett, brought to the forefront of her mind from her earlier conversation with Heather. She smiled ruefully. It had been only one summer. . . . At that summer’s end, Cara had known without a shadow of doubt that she loved Brett. She could not see her life without him. She hadn’t thought twice about giving up her career in Chicago to stay in the lowcountry with him.
Who says it has to be hard?
She laughed to herself. Love wasn’t hard, she thought. Losing love was.
Over the past month, her friends had taken her back to places that held happy memories of her and Brett. At first the memories had left her heartbroken. But time, that all powerful healer, had allowed her at last to remember Brett without the stabbing pain of bitterness, sorrow, or regret. Those feelings would return, she was sure of it. Grieving was a long process. She was grateful nonetheless for moments of serenity and, dare she say, joy, remembering the beautiful times they’d shared. She dreaded thinking what her life would have been like had she never met him, loved him, and spent the most memorable ten years of her life with him.
The evening breeze drifted across the beach. The long hot days of summer were ending, and all that was green would soon turn to gold. She drew letters in the sand with her finger: B-R-E-T-T.
Brett had been the great passion of her life. Loving him was unlike anything else she’d experienced before or since. Looking back, she saw their life together as a gift—a brief few years stolen from time. And now she had to accept that time was over. She would hold the memories of their love close for the rest of the days she was given. But for now, she had to move on. Heather, for all her youth and inexperience, had seen her path clearly and chosen to follow it. She was inspiring. Could Cara do any less?
She’d given the subject of what to do next a great deal of thought. She was fifty years old. Not young any longer, but certainly not old. As Brett had told her, she had twenty, thirty or more years left to live. In that time, she’d like once again to have something of her own. To do work she cared about. Not for success or money . . . Of course, she needed to find a way to earn dollars. And soon. But the pursuit of wealth would not inspire passion. If she was one of the very lucky, she would be passionate doing something she was paid to do, but would prioritize the passion above the dollar sign. Brett was the first example that came to mind. Heather was another. Neither of them got rich from their work, but they worked from morning till dusk and enjoyed the time spent in between. Life didn’t get much better than that, did it?
Cara had loved her work in advertising, she realized. Developing ideas, writing copy, driving her ideas home to a boardroom full of clients. The flow of adrenaline, the thrill of the chase, rising to the challenge, deadlines, decisions—she missed all that. It was part of who she was—a part, she realized with sudden clarity, that she’d tried to squash for quite a long time.
She exhaled slowly. Ideas and thoughts began batting about in her head. New plans and possibilities . . . Suddenly Cara jerked her head up, her gaze narrowed on the water. It couldn’t be, she thought, even as she leaned forward, squinting, alert. The dark shadow moving in the surf was large—much too large for a horseshoe crab. It could only be one thing. A loggerhead!
Cara remained stock-still on the dune; she didn’t move a muscle as she watched the turtle inch her way out of the surf onto the beach. The loggerhead waited there, sniffing out the territory. If there were people walking on the beach, dogs, coyotes, any disturbance on the sand, Cara knew that the turtle would pivot and return to the safety of the sea. Coming ashore was an exercise in instinct and courage. The loggerhead had to leave the sea—her home where she was strong and graceful—and enter a foreign world on shore to labor awkwardly against gravity under the weight of her carapace. She would not risk the hard, plodding trek across the beach to the dunes to lay her nest unless her instincts gave her the green light.
Cara’s first thought was of Heather. She’d told Cara several times how much she hoped to see a sea turtle. Catching one as it came ashore was a matter of luck. And God’s good grace, as Lovie would have said. But Heather was gone to Dewees.
Cara didn’t dare move lest she spook the turtle. The shadowy bulk moved forward. Her flippers stretched out to drag her body forward, and then she paused, catching her breath. Every few steps the turtle stopped again. She made good progress up the beach, inching her way straight to the base of Lovie’s dune.
It can’t be a coincidence that the turtle came tonight, to this dune, she thought with wonder. Cara smiled tremulously at the idea that the turtle had come right to her, as though predestined. Thanks, Mama.
This turtle was a big girl, a wise and experienced mother who’d been nesting on these beaches for many years. It being August, this wasn’t her first nest of the season, either. It might even be her third or fourth. Likely her last. After tonight’s labor, she’d return to the sea and a well-deserved rest.
The turtle began moving again. Cara could hear the flippers scraping the sand. Hidden behind the sea oats, she crouched and watched in awed silence as the turtle scooped up a flipper-full of sand, then another, again and again for almost an hour until she’d finished digging her nest. Then silence.
The moonlight lit up the night and Cara could readily see the majesty of this ancient ritual. She quietly slunk back from the front of the dune, then scooted around beachside to get closer. It was said that once a sea turtle began laying her eggs, she went into a kind of trance and was unlikely to stop until her last egg was laid. Cara found a spot far enough away not to distract the turtle, but close enough to see the white, leathery eggs fall into the nest. Her shell was dusted with sand and pocked by a few barnacles, trophies from thousands of miles of swimming.
She thought back to the first time she’d witnessed this event more than ten years earlier. It was a night much like this one, balmy with a bright moon. Lovie had been sitting on her dune and spotted the turtle coming ashore. She’d run to fetch Cara and bring her recalcitrant daughter out to the beach. Lovie had known then that Cara needed to see this.