When my mother left us, I asked my father why she couldn’t come back. He leaned over me and whispered: “She’s gone out to the sea, in search of bigger fish, and I fear she may never return.” He gave me a wry smile. His breath smelled of whiskey and his eyes refused to meet mine. He kissed my cheek and left, and soon after, the sound of his sobs seeped through the thin wall that separated us. 

    Three months later he announced that his great aunt, who had no children, had died, and he had inherited her old beach house. Good, I thought, an opportunity to grow closer to Mom. But Tilda and Natalie both began to cry; they didn’t want to leave their friends behind. Slowly I realized what moving meant. How it meant I had to leave the house in which my mother had raised us. All my memories of her would slowly leave me, because I could never again look at the back deck and think of when I painted it with her. 

    But Dad didn’t care. We moved, and for months I couldn’t forgive him. I stopped talking to try and punish him. For fifty-three days I didn’t say a word. Dad couldn’t afford a psychologist so all he could do was beg. His begging quickly evolved to punishment, but he gave up after grounding me for two weeks. He realized he had nothing to take from me. 

The school would hand me detention after detention until finally they suspended me for insubordination. Dad had to work, so for four days I was home alone.

    On the third day, the phone rang. It was odd because not many people knew our new phone number. Usually I wouldn’t answer the phone but really I had nothing better to do. 

    “Listen, Lucas, I know you told me I shouldn’t call, and I know I fucked everything up, but I really want to see them. I’m only here for a few more days and I can’t bear not having contact anymore. Please, just let me talk to my kids.”

    “Mom?”

    There was a long silence. 

Then she hung up. 

    That was the first word I’d spoken since we moved. I was glad my mother was the only one to hear it.

    She died a few months after that call. Dad wouldn’t tell me how. He wouldn’t let us go to the funeral. 

    Guilt clung to my back for a long while, hanging on my shoulders with its claws deep in my flesh.

    Every night, whenever I reached that state of mind in which I was neither fully awake nor fully asleep, I’d sneak outside and visit the fairies that lived in the leafless trees of our backyard. I would lay down in the sand, and face the sea, and they would come and dance on my shoulder. I’d wake up in bed the next morning, with sand still in my hair.

    Sometimes I would rub my eyes, and the fairies would transform into clueless lightning bugs, flying aimlessly in the cold night air. They were trying to hide themselves from my conscious state of mind.

Some days of the week, I’d remain in that state between sleep and wake, even while I drew, or studied, or chatted with my teachers, and the only thing that’d wake me up was a good night’s sleep. I feared that one day the sleep wouldn’t be enough, and I’d be stuck in some kind of perpetual limbo, never to be fully conscious again. 

I became obsessed with my mother. I felt I had to learn how she died, why she died, where she died. If I was at fault for her death. I wished I could talk to her. Every night I prayed to God to let me speak with her again, a full conversation, one that started with “How was your day?” and ended with “So that’s that.” But God stopped listening to my prayers after a while. 

Her name was Frances. Dad wouldn’t tell me her maiden name. 

After months of detective work, I closed the case cold. I didn’t have the energy to search for her ghost. But she never stopped haunting me. 

The fairies danced on my shoulder, I laid in the sand. I watched the ocean. A figure rose silently from the water. The moonlight bathed her silky skin. Slowly she walked to my body. She wore a long white dress, unsullied by the sea’s predative waters. I watched from outside myself as she bent over and dragged a ghostly hand along my cheek. She walked around me with great caution, then laid behind me, her body against mine. I closed my eyes. I felt at home.

These nights, I could not tell where the sky began and the sea ended.

When I woke the next morning, tears stained my white sheets. I realized that I no longer felt isolated in this home. 

Years later, when the fireflies were no longer fairies, and the sand was no longer cushion, I looked through an old family album. By this time, Dad had died, and Tilda and Natalie had married good-looking men, and I had started college. 

I recognized my mother, not from my early childhood, but instead from the night she had taken everything undesirable from my mind. She cured me. 

I came back, the summer before my senior year. First I visited the home I grew up in. Someone had repainted the back deck. 

Then I drove to the beach house. Natalie sold it as a vacation home to a rich family in New England, and split the money between the three of us. They were not visiting. 

Night had arrived, and the moon had colored the sand blue. I went out back and laid down. I closed my eyes and cried.

They lived beside the sea, away from all the commotion and business and hatred. Here they could love each other unconditionally. Here they could love each other with freedom. For a while I had wanted to join them. But it was not my time. 

They wiped my tears away. They shut my eyes with their fingers and cradled my shivering body and let me sleep, away from the life I would soon return to.

The fairies danced on my shoulder. 

Slowly they healed the scars my guilt had left behind.

And I was at peace.