The House Between Tides

The tide goes out further here than anywhere else on the coast, and every evening the same question walks out with it: what does the sea keep, and what does it give back.

Mara counted the steps down to the water because counting kept her from thinking about the letter in her coat pocket. Forty-one, forty-two. The wood was soft where the salt had been at it for years, and she stepped over the place where the railing had given up entirely.

At the bottom the sand was still wet, ribbed like the inside of a shell, and the house stood where it had always stood — one room deep, two rooms wide, with a light in the window that nobody had lit.