Avalon

Danny had gone again, chasing salmon this time.

He said the sea cleared his head. I believed him.

He promised he’d be fine. His mates were with him.

I promised to take care of Ned, his huge, adorable Mastiff, while he was gone.

For a heartbeat, it was quiet.

Then, late afternoon, a message came through.

Short.

Uneven.

The kind of honesty that slips out when someone is breaking open.

The house feels too big. Don’t want to be alone.

I grabbed my bag without thinking.

Pick me up. I’ll sit with you.

His headlights cut a pale path through the dark, the radio low.

We talked softly, the way you do when the night feels fragile.

Ned panted in the back seat, tail thumping gently, steady as a heartbeat.

Danny talked about his marriage again. A little bitter, a little angry, but mostly, just weary. The long erosion of someone who had been diminished slowly, over years.

I tried to lift us toward lighter things.

The kids.

His fishing trip.

The ridiculous things our dogs had done that week.

At one point he said, almost to himself,

“I didn’t even want to call him Ned, but my ex insisted.

I would’ve called him Ace.”

I smiled.

That sounded more like him. Big and strong. Solid.

When we reached the sand, Ned leapt from the car and bounded across the beach, enthusiastic and joyful. It cracked something open in both of us, we laughed.

Danny set up a little way down the shoreline, rod in hand, line cast into the surf.

The sky was painted in pink, purple and gold, one of those sunsets that makes me want to reach for my watercolours. Like a gift from God, the ultimate artist.

I walked barefoot along the shore. A seagull glided low across the water, its clean arc loosening something in my chest, then my shoulders, then my jaw.

We didn’t talk much.
He wasn’t crying.
He wasn’t breaking.
He was just… quiet.

I settled beside Ned and watched the tide breathe itself in and out.

Salt and the smoke from Danny's cigarette in the air.

“Can you shine the light on my lure?”

“Like this?”

“Yeah. That’s good.”

Everything was still.

The ocean moved like breath.

The world felt held.

And I thought that maybe I’d done something small but good. That sitting beside someone in silence could keep the dark away.

He smiled once, faint and faraway.


I remember thinking he looked calm.


That he was OK.

When he dropped me back home, I felt light.
Like I’d been someone’s guardian angel for the night.


We didn’t hug.

Didn’t touch.

Didn’t need to.

Just two people sitting with the sea.

One trying to live through the night,
and the other believing she’d helped him do it.

________

A place and a time where some part of me, and some ghost of him, will never leave.