There Is More Light Than Dark

Chapter Seventy Two

Friday August 19

Harper Lewis looked down at the beach sprawling below her.

It was that look of reverence you give to a scene so vast and so natural that all you can do is stare, like your eyes are trying to gourmandise as much of a scene as they can whilst it is there and perfect. The silence that invariably goes with it, even when you have company, pays homage to the fact you have been lucky enough to be right there at that moment.

As always she thought of her father. But the melancholy and tears that swelled within her were ever so slightly different today. They weren't cloaked or any less meaningful but they were perhaps shepherded by the feeling that someone else out there might just look to keep the kind of world her father had talked about, but never promised her.

And if Roger Lewis was there he might have stepped just a few metres away and whispered to her that she could start to do all of this on her own now.

She breathed through the southerly that buffeted her face but kept her mind sharp. She let the tears dry and noticed they stopped sooner today than they had for a long time.

Harper Lewis surveyed that infinite horizon and noticed things within herself that had shifted since Dean McCoy had been at her side.

Maybe she would have her feelings shift from betrayal to worthy, or at least accepting that there was still hope in better people.

And the brown satchel sat on the couch at home today, not even in the car.