The Ocean is My Home

"Is that why you moved to Arizona? It's the goddamn desert, Marnie. I thought you, of all people, would be a little more creative than that." She fished a cigarette pack and a lighter out from under the quilt. With shaking hands she put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it, then took a deep drag. "It didn't make you forget, though, did it? You still remember how it feels."

A large wave broke near the shoreline, sending its frothing edge with bubbling fingers toward me. I jumped back and Diana laughed. "You've been living in the desert too long. Welcome back." She blew out a puff of smoke into the air between us, like the ghost of unspoken words.

"I came because of Gil."

She looked at me again, her eyes flat, her cigarette stilled in her hand. "I know." She turned from me, examining the tall mast of the fading sailboat again, as if hoping to see something new. "I wouldn't expect you to come back for me." She took another drag from her cigarette, her hand shaking so badly she could barely make it to her mouth.

"Quinn called me," I said, feeling embarrassed that I hadn't seen the need to lie. "Is he up at the house with Gil?"

Pale green eyes studied me and it was as if I were looking into my mother's face. "There's nothing you can do for us here, Marnie. Go back to your desert, to your months without rain, and leave us alone. We don't need you here, and I don't want you here. So go home."

"I am home," I said, surprising myself with the words. It had been ten years since I'd called this place by the ocean home.

She stood suddenly, the quilt falling into the sand and water. I stared in horror at her legs, merely bones with flesh clinging to them, a large white bandage bisecting the upper quadrant of her thigh. It's been almost two months since the accident. Why is it still bandaged? I looked up into my sister's eyes, hoping to see anything but the defiance I found there. Without a word, Diana turned and walked away from me down the beach, leaving only a trail of cigarette smoke and more hurt than could be contained in the mere vastness of the ocean.

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The Memory of Water is a story about two estranged sisters and how life brings them back together. Karen White is the featured new author in the Sisterhood Group. Click here to join the group today.

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