“We’re all four building a sandcastle,” I surmise when my voice feels steadier.

“Like a family.”

I nod to her.  I can see her clenching her toes in the rug.  She’s nervous.

“Like a family.  I love it, Emmy.”

She doesn’t say anything else; she just turns and runs off, leaving me a little mystified as to what I did to make her go. She comes running back, just as fast, a few seconds later, though, and something is dangling from her hands.

She stops in front of me to sift through the necklaces, taking the longer, thicker one from the clutch of chains she holds.  “This one is yours,” she says, holding it out to me.  It’s a dog-tag type chain, and at the end of it swings a clear hourglass filled with sand.  “We made them for us.  So you don’t have to put sand in your pocket anymore.  You can have it with you all the time.  Even at the grocery store.”

I glance back at Eden. Her eyes are shining.  Obviously she shared my pocketful of sand with Emmy. I don’t mind.  It’s nothing I’m ashamed of or try to hide.

I slip the chain over my head as Emmy pulls hers on, too. It’s shorter and thinner, as is Eden’s, who comes to get hers next.  Emmy picks up her hourglass, kisses it and then trots off to the living room to watch her cartoons.

I turn toward Eden when she speaks.  I’m still marveling at the sand, something that’s so special to me, trapped safely within the little vial.  “The night after I brought her home, she told me that she’d gone to your house for help, but that you weren’t home so she decided to hide in the shadows along the surf until it was safe.  I guess the water was colder than she thought and she…”  Eden’s voice trails off on a choking sound and I pull her into my arms. I know it will take time for the shock, for that kind of fear to leave her unshaken.  When she collects herself, she leans back and looks up into my eyes.  “She wanted to go back to the beach yesterday.  She said she wasn’t afraid of the sand, that it was where we met you and your little girl.  Sh-she didn’t want you to forget either of them, so she wanted to make these for us.”

Tears well in her eyes again and I kiss her forehead.  “I could never forget either of them. Charity was a part of me. She always will be, but Emmy has wormed her way into my heart, too.  I want her in my life.  Her and you,” I tell her carefully.

I glance behind me at Emmy then I swing my gaze back to Eden.  “Can I stay for a while tonight?  So we can talk? After Emmy goes to bed?”

Eden’s smile is small, but happy.  “Of course.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. In my mind, I make a list of all the things I want to tell her, all the things I want to say.  Like that I told Brooke that it was over. Like that I want to start over with her and Emmy.  Like that I just ask for one day at a time, so we can learn and grow and do this the right way. So that I don’t screw it up. I feel like I’ve got a second chance at life and I want to make this work.  For Emmy.  For Eden.  For me.  For my daughter. She’d want me to be a better person for Emmy. She was amazingly generous like that.  Nothing will ever make me stop loving her. Or missing her. Or wishing that things could’ve been different.  But she will always be alive in my heart. In my soul.  I’ll never let her go or replace her.  I can only prove to her, every single day, that she made me a better man. That knowing her and loving her made me the kind of man who could deserve her.  If I had her back again.

And all that starts tonight.

Eden starts to go around me to check the bread. I stop her with fingers lightly gripping her upper arm.  “Eden?”

She looks up at me, those big hazel-gray eyes melting me all the way through. This is right. She is right.  For me. For my life. She’s beauty for my ashes. And I’m hope for her heartache.  We fit.  Like we were made for each other.

“I’m going to make you fall more and more in love with me.  Every single day.  I promise.”

She grins at me, a different kind of grin, and I know I’ll remember it for the rest of my days.  “I don’t doubt that one bit.”

EPILOGUE

Eden

Five months later

AS LONG AS I live, I don’t think the beach will ever look the same.  Especially this one.  I look down the long expanse that stretches out to the left, the way we walk to go to our little cottage, and I remember the first time Emmy and I stepped onto that sand.  It was the day we moved here. The third time we’d moved hoping to find “home.”  It was the day we met someone who would change our lives forever.

At the time, I had no idea that I’d meet someone so broken.  Or that he’d be the man who could heal us.  Or that this sand could threaten life as well as sustain it.  I still feel a thin thread of fear when Emmy gets near the surf.  She’s declared to me on more than one occasion that she’s now seven years old.  She knows how to be safe.  I never take my eyes off her, though.  It’ll probably be years before I feel safe doing that.  If ever.  But there’s someone else watching over her now, too.

I glance back to where Cole is talking to Cody and Jordan as Emmy and her two little friends get buckets of water to fill up the mote she and Cole dug.  He watches her closely even as he chats with our friends.  I feel perfectly safe in his care, and I feel like Emmy is perfectly safe, too.

His eyes follow the girls as they run to the surf and carefully collect sea water.  Cole and Emmy made an enormous, very elaborate sandcastle for today’s festivities–a beach barbecue out in front of Cole’s cabin.  I know that if I were to go and pat the pocket of Cole’s swimming trunks, I’d feel a lump of sand.  He still does that. Still brings daisies for his daughter.  But he’s now included Emmy. They do it together, the three of them, I suppose.

We invited Cody and Jordan, who are now a very happy couple, as well as Cody’s two little girls who have become good friends to Emmy over the winter.  Ryan is in prison for child molestation, rape, sexual assault and battery.  Lucy is free, but she’s paying in her own way, not only with the money she gave me, but in the public eye.  I feel like that part of my life, of my past, truly can’t hurt me or Emmy anymore.

Brooke signed Cole’s divorce papers a few days after Emmy came home from the hospital.  It’ll be final next month.  All in all, it seems that life is pretty close to perfect.  Finally.  It’s like we had to pay our dues up front, a down payment on happiness.  As hard as it was, I can say now that it was worth it.  The only thing I would change is the scares with Emmy–both with Ryan and the beach.  She’ll always carry those emotional scars with her, but she’s healing more and more every day.  I’m just going to do everything within my power to make sure that her life is as smooth as I can make it from here on out.

Emmy and her friends come back to pour their water into the nearly-full mote and I hear Cole tell her to stay put for a few minutes.  When he stands and tells Jordan to watch them, I know he’s coming to me.  We are never far from each other.  It seems the longer we are together, the closer we need to be.  To touch, to reaffirm.  He spends every night at my house and “comes back” right after Emmy gets up.  Time apart feels almost unbearable, but we make up for it when we are together.  Doubly so after Emmy has gone to bed, when we can touch and taste and memorize every tiny detail of each other. I’ve never met a more perfect man.

I scan his long, lean body as he jogs down the beach toward me.  I can see him in pads and a jersey, chasing a football down the field.  Wide, wide shoulders, trim, trim waist, long, powerful legs and arms.  That ripped stomach that disappears into his shorts and the magic that hides just inside them.