“Happy birthday, Lilah,” I said, holding it out for her.
She smiled and then squeezed her eyes closed to make a wish.
“Quick,” I joked. “Before the wax drips.”
She opened her eyes, met mine, and leaned forward to blow out the Twizzler.
After four hours and two bags of peanut M&Ms, I fell asleep for a while, lulled by the white noise of the freeway. When I woke up sometime later, we were driving over a bridge, surrounded by water on both sides.
Lilah’s green eyes slid to me. “We’re almost there.”
I sat up in my seat and glanced around us, trying to place where we were. Thousands of islands sit off the coast of Texas and we could have been driving onto any one of them.
We continued on through a sleepy beach town. The shops were all closed except for a Starbucks on the corner of Main Street. As we passed a donut shop on the corner, their neon “OPEN” sign turned on. Light was just beginning to pierce the black sky as we pulled into a parking lot across from a beach covered in shadows. Seaweed was scattered across the sand, laying in clumps where the tide had come in overnight.
“We almost didn’t catch it in time,” Lilah said, opening her door.
“Catch what?”
She glanced back at me and smiled. “The sunrise.”
I let Harvey out first and he took off down the beach, his blond fur lit up in the dawn light. He chased off seagulls and dove headfirst into the waves. We walked to meet him and he came running back toward us, already a sandy mess.
“Do you recognize where we are now?” Lilah asked, stepping around the car and reaching her hand out for mine. I laced my fingers through hers and shook my head.
“Galveston?”
It was the first Texas beach that come to mind.
She smiled and shook her head. “Port Aransas.”
My stomach dipped as I stared back out over the beach, trying to pick up on any familiar landmarks. There was sand, and ocean, and seaweed, nothing that gave away the fact that I’d been there before. It didn’t seem any more special than any other beach, and yet, it was.
The last time I’d been there, my mom had been alive. The last time I’d jumped in those waves, my mom had held my hand. The last time I’d touched that sand, my mom had been standing beside me. She’d stood right where I was, letting her feet sink into the sand the same way mine did.
“I wanted to come here for my birthday,” Lilah said.
“Why?” I asked, staring out beyond the horizon.
“Because being here with you and your mom is the last perfect day I can remember,” she said, squeezing my hand for assurance.
I nodded, letting her words sink in as the sun started to creep up over the horizon.
“I think this is the start of mine.”
The End