Thirty-One Letters

Nine

I will never forget the moment your heart stopped and mine kept beating—Angela Miller

"So how was your night? Did you have fun?"

Hadley glanced up over the rim of her coffee mug at her father. He was leaning against the refrigerator in his jogging clothes, a half-drained water bottle dangling from his fingers. His brown hair was windswept and she could see the light from the overhead reflect off of some of his now-greying strands. He gazed at her expectantly, as if they were about to engage on a conversation of extreme father-daughter bonding.

"It was fine," she said.

"How's Casey?"

She shrugged and placed her mug down on the counter next to her half-eaten bowl of cereal.  "Okay, I guess. She and her grandparents are going on a trip to Nepal before she heads off to college."

"Sounds like fun."

"Mm hmm."

"You know, I was thinking..." her father trailed off.

Hadley stared at him, looking into the very blue eyes that he'd passed down to her and Tanner. "What?" she ventured as he hesitated.

"Well, your mother and I were talking and we were thinking that maybe you could come work at the shop. Just a few times a week, get you out of the house, earn a little bit of money...?"

She hesitated, not at the prospect of working at the shop but more about the fact of who her coworkers would be. Hadley's stomach dropped, her appetite waning, as she thought about working alongside Ian for hours at a time, unable to get away...

"Maybe," she said and she took a long pull from her coffee cup so she wouldn't have to say anything else.

Her father nodded and smiled. "Well...all right then." He pushed away from the counter. "Big plans today?"

"I might go for a walk."

"Okay. Let your mother or I know when you leave."

"Fine."

He nodded again, pacified, and then left as he went to go shower away the sweat and grime from his run.

She didn't waste much time thinking about her father's proposal because she knew it was the wrong course of action. Once upon a time, Hadley wouldn't have minded working at the shop. In years' past, she normally did work there part-time in the summer. Now, she wasn't even sure if she even wanted to surf again. There were too many painful memories affiliated with the sport. She hadn't been in the water since the day she'd gotten pounded and nearly drowned.

In a way, Hadley supposed she could pick something new. Say goodbye to the past and complete Tanner's seventh challenge in one straight shot. The issue was that Hadley couldn't think of anything new to start. The more she sat, the less inspiration she had and so she went to her room to retrieve the scrapbook and stepped out onto the deck.

For the better part of the next hour, Hadley catalogued her last few challenges. She pasted in the photograph of her camping gear and the constellations from when she'd camped on the beach and another from the following day when she'd gotten ice cream with Ty and his brother.

She had managed to sneak a photograph of the two of them for her documenting. It was a candid shot, nothing posed or awkwardly set. Ty had flung a scoop of ice cream at Penn that had subsequently dripped down the younger boy's nose. The photograph was of the moment that followed: Ty laughing and rustling his brother's hair as Penn tried to smash his ice cream cone into Ty's face—a playful glare marring his expression.