I’m drawn to the water and wade in further and further until I am almost knee-deep. The salty air blows on my face and I take deep calming breaths wishing away the pain and turmoil I can’t seem to handle. As tears trickle down my cheeks, the salty scent of the sea air seeps into my nose. I stop and sit down in the cold water, now barely below my chin. Then I dive under and never want to surface. Life seems so tranquil down here.

When I come back up I make my way to the sand and just lay there. The beach is very quiet. Birds chirp peacefully as they soar overhead. I close my eyes willing myself to stop crying. I can’t even figure out who I’m crying for—Ben, River, myself?

I must have drifted off because suddenly I can hear small children playing nearby and feel the hot sun beating down on me. I get up and wipe as much sand off me as I can and then make my way back to the car. Looking behind me, I see the footprints I left vanishing as people jog by without a care in the world, and I wish I had that same carefree feeling, the feeling I had just last week.

I grab my sneakers and sweater at the beach entrance—the only dry things I have. I take my keys out of my Converse and shove them in my jeans pocket. I pull my sweater around me with shaky hands, try to shake the sand from my hair and hurry to the car, my head swimming with the unknown. I break into a sprint to get there, my bare feet crushing against the stones beneath me, but I don’t even care. I’m almost gasping when I reach for my keys. Leaning my head against the steering wheel, I try to figure out what to do, where to go. Glancing over at my phone, I just want to hear his voice, so I turn it on and check my messages.

There are four—Grace, Serena, Aerie, and an unknown caller, but none from River. I’m not surprised. I’m mad as hell at him for not telling me what he knew, for making me doubt his trust, but he was just as mad at me for going to see Ben. I’ve never seen him like that. I’ve never seen me like that. I listen to the messages—Grace telling me to turn around and talk this out, Serena asking if I’m all right and telling me she’s here for me if I need to talk, Aerie yelling into the phone to call her now, and the unknown caller, Ben, begging me to come back. Ben—the voice I hadn’t heard in so long until yesterday, the voice of the man I loved unconditionally, the voice of the man whom I had always trusted.

My eyes are stinging and my thoughts are even more of a jumbled mess than they were before I got to the beach. I stare blankly at the traffic as it rushes by on the now-busy Pacific Coast Highway. My heart thumps out of my chest as I turn the engine on and jerk into the lane of traffic almost haphazardly. I skid to a quick stop at the first traffic light. I am driving way too fast, but my head is swimming with memories. Cars are honking for me to move as the light turns green. I accelerate as fast as I can and head to the only place that comes to mind right now.

When I pull up in front of the yellow house with the white picket fence, the FOR SALE sign still occupies the front yard. The place is neglected, in need of some tender loving care, but still, right now, it is my refuge.

Needing dry clothes, I call the only person I can. She answers immediately and forsakes the niceties. “Where the hell are you and what’s going on?” she yells into the phone. In a much calmer tone she quickly adds, “Are you okay, Dahlia?”

She obviously already knows Ben is back, and I take one deep breath and contemplate what to say. “Aerie, I need some help. I’m at my house here in Laguna. Can you please bring me some dry clothes?”

I’m surprised when all she says is, “Sure, I can. I can be there in less than twenty minutes. Will you be okay until I get there? Grace called me this morning and told me everything. Dahlia, she told me Ben’s alive.”

“Aerie, let’s talk when you get here, okay?”

“Okay Dahlia, I’ll be there as soon as I can. I love you.”

I hang up the phone without another word and toss it into the console, open my door, and walk up the path to the house. A house I lived in with Ben, a house I mourned him in, and a house where I was close to giving up when life was breathed back into me by River. Now everything seems distorted, confused. When you trust someone and they break that trust—what does it mean? That’s what I have to figure out, that’s why I’m here—so I can think.

As I unlock the front door I hear the wind chimes that used to welcome me home and enter the almost-empty house. I see the few pieces of furniture left—our oversize sofa where it always has been, the coffee table, and the two chairs. The rug is gone, the lamps were broken during the break-in that destroyed nearly everything, and anything left was moved into Grace’s attic or to River’s house.

Shivering, I pull my knees up on one of the chairs and just sit there, trying not to think about Ben, but that’s all I can focus on. Remembering my life with him.

Before I know it, I hear pounding on the front door and Aerie is yelling, “Dahlia, are you okay? Why is the door locked?”

I hop off the chair, not even remembering locking the door. As I walk I glance at the old key-shaped holder Caleb rehung after the break-in and Ben’s keys are still hanging there. For some reason they make me feel uneasy. As soon as I unlock the door, Aerie swings it open, hurrying past the threshold with coffees and a bag in one hand. She looks almost as disheveled as me, in sweatpants, a T-shirt, her hair in a ponytail, and yoga shoes. I’m surprised because she never goes out looking so un-put together.

Grabbing the coffee tray from her hand I blurt, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Me?” She eyes me up and down once before continuing. “What happened to me?” She drops the bag to the ground and seems unable to talk for a few seconds. “What happened to you? Where have you been? Why are you soaking wet and covered in sand?” Her questions continue but I tune them out, really wanting to sip the hot coffee and strip off these wet clothes. Realizing I don’t want to talk about any of it, I almost wish I didn’t call her. She takes the tray from my hand and sets it on the floor, then immediately pulls me to her and hugs me as hard as she can. We both stand there, me almost a head taller than her, and I can’t help but cry.

She pulls back and looks at me. “I have been worried sick about you. Grace called me at six this morning assuming you were headed to my house. Then as the hours ticked by and you didn’t show up we all started to worry.” She wipes the tears from my face before wiping her own. When she brushes the sand from her clothes, I can’t help but laugh.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to get you dirty.”

We both laugh and the Aerie I know is back, the take-charge Aerie. “Where have you . . . you know what, let’s get you changed first, you’re shivering, and we can talk after.”

She starts leading me down the hall to my bathroom, like I don’t know where I’m going, and I follow her like I need to be led. Once we reach the bathroom she pulls out some sweatpants and a sweatshirt from the bag and lays them on the counter as she starts to unbutton the shirt I have on—River’s shirt.

Gently placing my hands over hers, I tell her, “I can do it. I don’t need help.”

Pushing my hands away she says, “Just let me do it, let me help you.” I move my hands and she continues to unbutton the wet shirt. A moment of comfortable silence passes. Then she says in a soft, concerned tone, “I’m sorry, Dahlia. I really am.” I know she isn’t apologizing for helping me get undressed.

Suddenly it hits me, the last time she did this was when she came to see me the night Ben was killed. I remember now, she removed my black cocktail dress that night because I couldn’t. Then she tossed it on the corner chair, where it stayed for a long time. “Aerie, this isn’t like then,” I pause and motion to where the chair in my bedroom used to sit. “I’m not going to fall apart like I did before. Sure I’m confused, but I know the situation is completely different.”

Pulling my arms out of the shirt, I point to the two items on the counter and ask, “Is that all you brought? No underwear?”

Staring at me a little too long she says, “Dahlia, I had no idea why I was bringing you clothes. I didn’t think to grab a bra or a pair of panties. Why are you soaking wet anyway?”

“I needed to escape all the chaos so I decided to go for a swim. You know swimming always clears my mind.”

“In your clothes, Dahlia? Really?”

“Yes, in my clothes.”

“You know that is not normal? Right?”

I shrug.

She shakes her head and takes the shirt from me that I just stripped off. I unhook my bra and throw it in the sink. She stares wide-eyed at the huge purple bruise that seems to have morphed from my side to the front and back of my torso.

“I’m okay, Aerie—really I am. I’m not going to fall off the deep end.”

I slip my arms into her USC sweatshirt and pull it over my head. She grabs the hem and pulls it down for me and I let her. Then she pulls my hair out of the hood.

“I think we need to get those tangles out, I’m going to grab a brush out of my purse. I left it in the car. I’ll be right back. Will you be okay?”

“Yeah, of course.” And then as she leaves the room I call after her, “Hey, you don’t have any toilet paper in your car, do you?”

She laughs a little and says, “No, but I have Starbucks napkins. I’ll bring you some.” And with that she leaves me in the bathroom to change out of my now partially dried and stiffened jeans. Her sweatpants are way too short on me and soon I’m just staring at myself in the mirror. Memories of the girl who lost her fiancé are reflected back to me. I clutch the counter and close my eyes—I am not that same girl. I am much stronger. I will not fall back into a depressed state. What happened this morning cannot happen again—this I know. Jumping into the ocean to escape all the madness was simply a momentary lapse in judgment. Right?

Opening my eyes I take a deep breath and exit the bathroom. I glance over at the bed in the room I never wanted to be in after Ben died and try not to think of the pain and suffering his death caused me—and for what?

Back in the entryway, I grab the drinks, and go sit in one of the chairs, blocking out all thoughts of Ben. Aerie comes in a few minutes later.

“Thank you so much for this.” I raise my large paper cup in the air.

“Yeah, well I thought you might need some and I grabbed myself a tea while I was at it.”

When she says the word tea, I think about River and the first morning we spent together . . . when I wasn’t sure if he was a coffee or tea drinker. How relieved I was that he drank coffee.

She comes over to me and the memory dissipates as she tries to brush the knots out of my hair but can’t, so just ends up twirling it into a messy bun and securing it with the elastic she removed from her wrist.

“Always prepared.”

“I try to be,” she says, grabbing her cup and sitting in the chair next to me. She looks me up and down. “You know, we can go to my place and you can take a shower.”

“No, I really just want to stay here.”

She nods her head and we both sit quietly, sipping our drinks until I break the silence. “What else did Grace tell you about Ben, other than he’s alive? . . .” I start to speak the truth but the words sound strange, not real, and I can’t even complete the sentence.

“All she told me was that Ben was involved in something dangerous and had to leave for his safety and . . . ,” she pauses before adding, “. . . and for yours, Dahlia. But she didn’t feel comfortable discussing anything else and I didn’t push her.”

Frowning, I say, “I can see why. It’s a crazy story and honestly really hard to believe.”

“Why? Do you think he’s lying to you?”

“No. I don’t. It was just a lot to process and then he said something that set me off and I kind of exploded.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me he made the choice to leave.”

“What do you mean he had a choice?”

“He got himself into a bad situation and instead of talking about it, and us facing it together, he left.”

“Dahlia, did you stay to let him finish?”

“I tried, Aerie, I did. But I couldn’t listen to him anymore. You know what I went through when he died and to hear he made a choice . . .”

“Can you at least try to forgive him, so you can move past this and get some closure?”

“No! No! I’m not going to forgive him for what he did. I can’t!”

I’m unable to distinguish whether what I just said annoys her or saddens her, but from the slight downward curl of her lip, I’d have to go with saddens. We stare at each other for a long while and I know she’s being cautious with her words.

“Do you think you should sit down and listen to everything? I don’t know what he did, but I know he loved you and I’m sure the choice wasn’t easy.”

Not able to hide my irritation I tell her, “Don’t you get it, Aerie?—that’s just it, talking to him again won’t change anything.”

We share silence for a few more moments.

She raises an eyebrow. “I know it won’t, but I think it will help you better understand why he did what he did.”

Wow. She understands more than I thought she did.

I pause for a minute trying to understand why she’s pleading Ben’s case. When I think I’ve figured it out my face flames with skepticism and disbelief. “You don’t think I’m going to just jump out of my relationship with River and back into Ben’s arms? Do you, Aerie? Because it doesn’t work that way.”