topsail
	
	Things changed in the summer of 2014.

	I was seven years old when my mother disappeared. I remember the scene very vividly. At that house the kitchen was divided from the dining room by a change in the flooring; marble and wood  made distinct by a small raised wooden strip. The furnishings in both rooms were warm, cozy. I was in another room, the living room, this one carpeted. I knelt, hunched over, driving a wide assortment of matchbox cars around tracks indented in the carpet's fluff. My mom talked to her mother on the phone, seeming a little exasperated. That frustration in her voice made me uncomfortable. I focused more fully on my imaginary race. She hung up the phone, and hearing the clatter of plastic, I looked over. I saw her stand up calmly from her chair and disappear. 

	My dad came home an hour later and found me crying on the sofa. He tried to comfort me, sitting down next to me, speaking soothing words, but when he mentioned Mom I just started crying harder, screaming. I couldn't get any words out at all. I flinched at his touch, I writhed on the couch cushions, I tried to speak, but only sobs came out. We sat there until my cries dimmed into sniffles. I spoke, softly.
	"Where's Mom?"
	He looked around the room, then turned back to me, puzzled.
	"You don't know where she is?" he asked. I shook my head and looked down. He stood up, as worried as I had ever seen him, and walked out of the room. He must have been looking for her. In my mind I followed him as he walked towards the front of the house, looked out the window there, then went to the back window and looked outside. I imagined him checking every room in a panicked hurry, calling out to my mother, even though she wasn't anywhere. She had disappeared.

	When my dad came back inside, I was starting to cry again. Mom was nowhere to be found, and he must have known, because he hugged me tightly and his chest rose and fell heavily, out of breath.
	"Come on," He said. "Let's get in the car."
	
	He told me to bring blankets and a change of clothes, so that's what I did. I brought them outside and I moved the booster seat from Mom's car to his. He opened the doors and helped me in. The car had leather seats and black finish, a stereo system and speakers that shook the car if they were turned up too loud. He put a CD in and played it softly. I fell asleep about ten minutes into the drive.

	I remember the rest of the drive remarkably well for being half-awake. He didn't use his phone for a map. He had a paper map open, sprawled on the passenger seat, that I couldn't make out from my fortress of blankets in the backseat. We didn't take the freeways, and the world around the car was dark and mysterious, the tops of trees barely a different shade from the sky, blurring past out of the driver's-side windows. He drove faster than normal on those winding roads, though the ride was smooth and the path was well-paved. I don't remember much jostling, but there were a few quick bouts of acceleration and braking. I felt disoriented and yet safe, bundled in blankets and under the protection of my father.
	I woke to him tapping me on the shoulder. Light was just now barely beginning to touch the eastern sky, and when I stepped out of the car I felt the ground shift beneath me. The air was thick. 
	"Look," my father said. He had a hand on my shoulder and the other pointing out towards the ocean. I looked.
	The sky was a heady gradient, the richest and darkest blue, and the ocean mirrored it perfectly out to the horizon line. The steady beating of water on sand and the slow-moving sea foam harmonized with the wind. My hair, short as it was then, still swept backwards as I squinted into the sea breeze. No clouds marred the sky, no gulls, no garbage stained the shore. The car was parked on this side of the sandbar and the tracks it left were already evening out in the wind. Every reed wavered and every part of the world was either blue or gray except for the brown in my father's eyes. I still had a blanket wrapped around me.
	"Come to the water," said my father, with a gesture. We walked towards where the tide moved in, out, in, out, and sat down just out of its reach. We took off our shoes. I rested my head on his lap, and the one time I looked up at him, his eyes were red. We stayed there long past the sunrise.

	I don't remember anything past that until we pulled back into the driveway. My mom was there, back again, standing outside of the door. Her eyes were red too. She hugged me tightly and led me inside, to my room, where she tucked me into bed and closed the door. I slept.

	The world has dimmed a bit since then.