That was the thing about new grief: in its own terrible way, it was kind. It would slice sharply through nerves, leaving a person numb. Despite the cold gusts of wind blowing across her skin and through her clothes, her body burned from the inside out. Her mind turned the words over and over, trying to break into them; there was no use. The creators of coherent thought, of understanding, had been split neatly by the bullet of bad news. She could picture them- frayed and twisting wires in her heart and head, thrashing with escaping energy.

She breathed in. She tasted the air in a new way- it felt silver and sharp, briny and salty, filled with wind. There was a distant, constant roar of sound behind her- so different from the noise of the city. The ocean reminded her of things, things she couldn't remember right now.

She opened her eyes. She noticed things, small things, on the pavement, in the sand, in the leaf-choked gutters. A glint of soda cans, candy wrappers, white and tasteless gum. She caught them in her mind, pieced them together into strange and cluttered sculptures, and breathed them back out into the atmosphere.

And most of all, she thought of everything. Anything. Old phone numbers, song she used to hate, the lines of songs she used to love, leaves with lines like veins, lines in an old man's face, lines-

She saw him. She wanted to walk by but her feet would not keep going. She fell down, right there on the sidewalk, and almost cried. She would remember this later, best of all: the way he was there then suddenly, next to her, radiating heat, a trembling hand placed over hers. She could not look at him. She only heard his ragged, uneven breaths, his choked sobs, and his low voice as he told her-

"I'm sorry."

She wouldnot couldnot cry, no matter how badly it hurt all of a sudden, no matter how fiercely the realization beat against her eyelids, no matter, no matter-

"My name is Adam."

"Is it?" she laughed then. She would never know why. She felt insane. "My sister is dead, Adam."

"I'm sorry." He said it again. She opened her eyes and saw him, and knew he was the kind of man that never lied. He had a sweet old kind of face, smiling in the way she thought could be the saddest thing in the entire world. There were fine wrinkles at his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, as if a long time ago he had spent his time smiling. He was shaking and his eyes were watery, lined with red.

"There's something wrong with you, too," she said solemnly, honestly. He nodded.

"Do you think we all make mistakes?" he asked her. He wasn't looking at her anymore. He was looking at the moon instead, hanging heavy and worn and pregnant in the sky. It looked rounder than before. It looked filled with new life and an energy, the kind of energy middle-aged women had, raising the last few children and pulling back thinning hair, smudging smeared makeup even more. It didn't matter that he wasn't staring at her, anyway- the way some people did, gazing fixatedly on her eyes and searching out the little frayed edges of her body and her spirit- no, it felt nice. She could tell he was still listening. No one could ask a question like that and not really, really want an answer.

"Oh, we do," she told him. She breathed in the ocean and exhaled regret. "Everybody, everybody does."

"And can we fix them?" He looked at her, then stood up in one frighteningly fluid movement. The tears and the red-rimmed gaze was gone. Suddenly his eyes were occupied with a fierce stare, that horrible one she hated, the one that seemed to rip her fake smile right open and show everybody what she had really always been.

"Who are you fixing them for?"

He stopped. His body relaxed, the tension washing out of his muscles and swept away on the ebbing waves. "For anyone that may not like them."

"For anyone?"

"For everybody." He closed his eyes. "Nobody likes mistakes."

"I might," she challenged him. She stood up. She swept the sand from her jacket; she could feel the sharp granules dig into her skin and fall into the seams of her clothes she couldn't reach. "You never know."

"You don't like this one," he said quietly. He picked up a smooth green rock from the ground, glinting like jade. "People don't like what I've done."

"You haven't met everyone." She stepped up close to him, looking up sternly at his face. She felt like she was teaching a lesson, a lesson she didn't know and hadn't even really learned. "You don't."

"If you liked what I did," he said quietly, "if you thought it was okay, what I did to her- you would be me." He stopped short. He raised a hand to his eyes, massaging the bridge of his nose and sighing out all the aching within him. "And people who make mistakes like these, they don't ever last for long."

He had hugged her then. She had tensed, she had tried to squirm away, but for a minute he held fast. She couldn't help but feel how warm his skin was- the heat washed off of him in ripples, so strong they were nearly visible in the dry night air. She sensed the rough fabric of his jacket, felt the wrinkles where his arms bent, thought maybe she could feel his heart beating frantically underneath his skin.

"You'll need that," he told her. "I know it. You will."

He had gone then. He had just turned and started walking. She watched the gleam of his leather-black shoes there, crossing the street, the curl of his greyed hair along his ears, and the sway of his gray-green jacket, until he had slipped behind the dunes and there was nothing to watch anymore.

---

Two hours later she was sleeping. She was drowned in a mix of blankets and sheets and pillowcases and everything soft. She had wrenched the ancient window open to let the frigid air in; a flurry of paint flecks and plumes of aged dust had wafted across her before she felt the first cool breeze.

The TV had been left on. It cast a blue light over the room, casting her skin with a sickly and faded pallor. After a series of sitcoms, their casts sprinkled with former heartthrobs and washed up starlets, the news rolled onto the screen. It was a news report that she would never see.

She stirred in her sleep. She murmured a name, something like 'Annie.'

The anchor was desperate, pretty, and falsely blonde. In the harshly lit studio, her hair cast a halo of light around her tawny skin. "Welcome to the 11 o'clock news on Channel Six," she said brightly. "My name is Karen Holmes. In the news tonight: a primary suspect has been determined in the murder of Annie Clark..."

She thought she might never wake up. She thought she might just float on forever, lost in feathers and waves.

Deep in the layers of dreaming, something changed. Something shifted in the very center of her. It promised her she would wake up in the morning: come sunlight, her eyes would open and her heart would jump to beating and she would be alive. She would be alive for a very long time.

"As to his whereabouts," the news anchor finished, "we are still in the dark."

Somewhere, deep out in the night, a man kept walking.