The porch creaked as she stepped out onto it. Everything felt strange, as if her small body didn’t fit.

Crickets chirped from the shadows of their lawn. Her lungs shuddered as the dim evening washed over her.

Two months had passed since Emma’s death.

It was Clare’s tenth birthday.

She left the porch, wading through thick grass across their lawn. The late august air was humid and salty and cool. Like the ocean had crept up onto land, submerging everything.

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Beyond their lawn, her bare feet skiffed quietly on the sidewalks’ naked cement. She gravitated towards the ocean.

Always the ocean.

It thrummed like a heartbeat, like a memory tied into her taunt pulse.

Sand filled the spaces between her toes. She weaved a path between sharp rocks and rotting seaweed. Stepped into the waves.

No one would notice she was missing; not till morning at least. Her stale, beer-scented home didn’t need her. Only Emma had.

Emma, whose body had been swallowed up by the very ocean she adored.

At the funeral, Clare had been the only one not to cry. People had called her cold for it. Said she should be like her father, who sobbed buckets. The hypocrisy of it left her numb.

Now, the waves pushed at her feet, tripped her until she splashed down onto her knees.

For the first time since she was a toddler, Clare began to cry.