Page 2 of Where Sea Meets Sky

She hadn’t had a heart attack, simply an intense panic attack. The doctors had told her that she was right to come in and make sure, and that her stress levels were concerning. She remembered the concerned look on the female doctor’s face as she’d said, “If you’re not careful, it might be a real heart attack next time. You need to take some time off.”

Faith sighed. Everyone at the law firm had been very understanding, and one of the other lawyers had taken over her case. She felt relieved, but also disappointed in herself. She’d been striving to be the best she could be for years, and this slip-up made her feel like a failure.

She thought to herself that she should watch a movie, but she didn’t pick up her remote yet. She sat on the couch, watching the lights of Boston flicker and dance through her windows. Cars honked in the distance. Outside on the sidewalk, someone shouted and a dog barked.

She realized that she’d never thought about how much noise there was in the city. There was always sound and movement, a sense of urgency. She’d never paused long enough to notice it, but she felt it then, like an invisible current urging her to hurry up, to get caught up in the hustle and bustle.

She took another sip of her tea, wondering what she should eat for dinner. She always ordered takeout on Saturday night, if she wasn’t out to eat with her colleagues or a client. She felt a sudden desire to cook, but she knew that all she had in her cupboards was a potentially-expired can of diced tomatoes and boxes of tea. Even her freezer was empty of microwave dinners. She realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to a grocery store. When she did buy groceries, she paid to have them delivered to her door because it saved time.

All at once, her perception of her life shattered. The glossy, idealized façade that she’d imagined over her existence burst into a million pieces. She wasn’t happy. Money and success hadn’t done anything to enrich her life. She was lonely, and she’d been living in a state of stress for months—no, years.

She had to admit to herself that even though she’d never had a panic attack like that before, she’d been feeling tension building inside her for a long time. She’d kept telling herself that she loved her job and she’d always wanted to be a lawyer, but the reality was that she wasn’t cut out for a high-stress environment like that. She knew lawyers should be compassionate, but she was too empathetic. She felt emotions regarding her cases that contributed to a sense of being constantly overwhelmed.

And I can’t keep living like this,she thought, leaning her head back onto the couch cushions.That doctor said I have to reduce my stress levels. I don’t think I could ever be a lawyer and not get stressed by it—at least not for these high-pressure cases we deal with in the city.

She could hardly believe she was entertaining the idea, but she began to wonder if she needed to change her career.

As soon as the thought was fully formed in her mind, a strange sense of peace washed over her. She sat up fully, surprised by how happy the idea of quitting her job made her.

She found herself wishing that she could go to her parents and ask for advice. She had friends and colleagues that she could chat with about the mundane details of her life, but she didn’t have anyone who she was particularly close to. She felt the need to go to someone for advice, someone who would be both kind and honest with her.

That’s the other thing,she thought, shifting in her position so that she was sitting cross-legged on the couch.When I was in the hospital, not one person, friend or family, visited me while those tests were being run.

She sighed. She knew her lawyer friends had been busy, and some of them had texted her to check in. But she wished that she had someone in her life who would have rushed over to be with her. Someone who could have held her hand, literally and metaphorically, while she lay anxiously in the hospital bed. The doctors and nurses had all been kind and reassuring, but it wasn’t the same as having someone there who was just there for her.

She sat quietly for a while, staring into space and finishing her mug of tea. Her mind pondered her situation, and she became more and more convinced that she needed to turn her life around somehow. She wanted to be able to rest, to do all the little things, like cook and go grocery shopping, that she never had the time for. She’d loved doing those things with her mother and father when she was younger. She’d felt as though her life was something that she could create for herself day by day. Now she felt as though her life was a bullet train that she had no control over.

She set her empty mug of tea down on the coffee table and stood up. She felt a sudden urge to start cleaning her apartment. She had a cleaning service come in every other week, but it had been ages since she’d actually done any kind of tidying or reorganizing herself.

She made her way into her bedroom and opened the closet. In the back of it were several boxes that had sat unopened since she’d moved to Boston. She picked one of them up and lugged it back to the couch.

I’ll sort through this,she thought.I bet most of it I can throw away. I don’t even remember what’s in here, really.

The first couple of things she came across were junk. There was a little plastic trophy she’d won at some Christmas party in law school, and she couldn’t even remember what she’d done to win it. Beneath the trophy was a knit hat that the mother of her last boyfriend had made—it was a hideous, lumpy green thing with a fuchsia pom-pom that clashed horribly. She thought to herself with a chuckle that the relationship might have lasted more than a few months if she hadn’t felt as though she would eventually have to wear that hat in public.

She shook her head as she set the junk items aside. That had been years ago. Since then, she hadn’t had the time or energy to even entertain the thought of romance.

She picked up the next item in the box, which was a small manila envelope. Curiously, she opened it, having no memory of what was inside.

She sucked in her breath when she saw that it was a thick stack of photographs. She must have gotten them from her mother years ago and had never gone through them. She thought with a bittersweet ache in her heart of how her mother had always been encouraging her to make photo albums and scrapbooks. She’d never had the time, but she made a mentalnote to go out and buy an album for the pictures in the envelope the first chance she got.

She snuggled back on the couch and began to flip through the photographs. She was soon laughing and crying over memories of going fishing with her father, baking cookies with her mother, and going on family road trips. There were pictures of birthdays and Christmases and the Fourth of July.

About halfway through the stack, she came across a picture that made her lean forward. It was a picture of her dad with his arm around a woman who she vaguely remembered. She flipped the picture over and saw that her mother had written “Lyle with Cousin Vivian” on the back.

Vivian Owens! The name popped into Faith’s head in a flash. She suddenly remembered being little and going on a trip with her parents to visit her dad’s cousin Vivian Owens and her family. She looked at the next photograph in the stack and saw that it was of her and her little cousins building a sandcastle on the beach.

She smiled fondly at the picture. Although she barely remembered the people in the photograph, she remembered the feeling of being surrounded by love and a sense of belonging. They’d had a lot of fun together. They’d been kind.

They were family.

Tears sprang into her eyes, and she wished that her connection with the Owens had been fostered more during her childhood, or that she’d thought to look them up in her adulthood.

In the next picture, she and her parents were standing with Vivian and her family along the side of the road, everyone staring at a giant bullfrog that was crouched at the edge of the concrete. In the distance, there was a sign that read, “Welcome to Rosewood Beach.”

“Rosewood Beach,” she murmured, the words spilling off her tongue like some kind of magic spell.

In the next moment, she grabbed her laptop off the coffee table and opened it. It felt good to be using it for something other than work. She typed in “Rosewood Beach” and leaned forward to look at the search results.

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