Breakwater Bay by Shelley Noble

died.
    Meri turned back to the front page. Took another sip of wine.
    There was a long inscription on the top margin, as if written as an afterthought. As a prologue?
    The script was so faded that she had to move to the chair that sat beneath the reading lamp. She turned it to full wattage and squinted at the script.
                 I know I have to put this down on paper. So much has happened that already it is hard to remember how things came about. But they did. And one day it might be important.
                 April, 1984
                 I guess it really started the night we heard on the news that a plane had gone down, a passenger plane, the same airline Huey flew for. His flight. It started that moment, the pain. Way before they officially notified me I knew the truth. Huey was dead along with his crew and eighty passengers. It was a mechanical failure, there would be an investigation. I would be remunerated.
                 Remuneration. It was too soon for my husband to die. It was too early for the baby to come. But he did, and she did.
                 For two months I lay on my back trying to save the only thing left of my marriage while inside I raged against being left alone after two years of happiness. I loved Huey and I swore I would never love anyone else, except this baby if God would only let me keep her.
                 But he didn’t. She just came, hardly with a pain, or a cry, no time to even get to the car much less to the hospital. Katy Dewar came from over at Briggs Pond. But it was too late when she got here.
    Meri wiped tears away, reached for her wine. Surely this was more than any daughter needed to know.
                 I went a little crazy. I wanted to die, what was left for me? Huey gone, my little girl gone. We would have named her Rose. They let me hold her for only a second. Then took her away. I begged for just a few more minutes, but Katy said there were things to be done. Rose was never even put in the crib that Huey and I found in Grover’s junk store and refinished together. I never saw her again. Little Rose. We buried her a few days later. But that was after the storm came.
    Meri shook herself. This was more than she could stand. She closed the book, got up, and went to the window to stare out. The street was quiet. It was late and off-season. Everyone was in bed, getting a good night’s sleep before work the next day. Where she would be tomorrow, up on that scaffolding cleaning away paint like nothing had happened.
    Her eyes were gritty and her stomach burned. She needed tissues, water, and something to eat. She went to the kitchen and opened the fridge.
    Empty, except for a six-pack of water. She took a bottle and closed the door. Looked in a cabinet and found a nearly empty jar of peanut butter, no crackers, no bread. She got a spoon and carried the peanut butter and bottle of water back to her chair.
                 They tried to take me to the hospital but I fought them off. Why take care of me? There was nothing left to me. Nothing. Empty. Crazy. I could see them looking at each other, Katy worried, Mother worried and scared. I heard Katy say she wouldn’t leave until I was “out of the woods.”
                 The next afternoon, or maybe the next, a storm came in, a big one. One minute it was sunny and then black. The wind howled, just like I felt, and the rain came so hard you couldn’t see across the yard.
                 It was warm and bright inside though. All the lights on, not even flickering as they did in most storms. I just thought of that now. Why didn’t the lights go out? Mother had forced me to the kitchen to eat some soup she had made. Katy helped me to my chair. I didn’t need help. I wasn’t physically sick, my heart was broken.
                 Mother had just filled the bowls when there was a pounding on the door. At first I thought it was