My parents moved slowly, like people entering a church they didn’t think they belonged in yet. My mother rearranged the kitchen three times because she said such a pretty room should not force her to reach too far for the salt. My father learned where the wind hit hardest and which porch chair had the best line of sight to the water. He took up watching weather. Seriously. My father, who once measured days only by work and bills, started calling me to discuss cloud fronts and tide patterns and whether the gulls seemed especially aggressive that week.
When I visited, the whole house felt looser around them. My mother slept better. My father’s shoulders dropped half an inch. They hosted tiny dinners and bought better coffee and started taking evening walks down the bluff path without acting like leisure was an embarrassing illness. My mother knitted in the mornings. My father read books he pretended not to enjoy. Sometimes I’d arrive on a Sunday and find them sitting side by side on the porch not talking at all, just watching the light change on the water, and the sight of it would undo me in a way I could never explain without sounding dramatic.
Claire and Daniel visited too.