Free What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

and when I pulled them aside I saw that the air was full of snow, though the flakes were fine and not yet sticking to the ground. In the bathroom I studied my face, tilting it back and forth in the light, relieved that I could hardly see a bruise. I stepped out of my room, giving a wave to the watchman, who must have been coming to the end of his shift, and turned toward the Sea Garden, wanting to see the water again. The park wasn’t deserted this time, despite the hour and the snow; as I walked I passed old couples strolling briskly, men with their dogs, even cyclists, all out for a morning’s exercise beside the sea. Just past the entrance on the left there was a huge casino complex, from the depths of which I could hear the driving beat of dance music; there must have been a disco there, where even in the off-season the morning had yet to come. I wanted to see the water, but not just to see it; I wanted to be close to it, to imagine if not to feel the unearthly cold of it. And so I walked more purposefully through the garden, bypassing, as best I could, its more winding paths, and when I reached again the line of hotels and bars and, beyond them, the road, I didn’t retreat, I crossed the road and held my face to the wind, though it was biting and filled now with snow. Three long walkways extended from the beach into the sea, branching out at their ends into three separate promenades, like the arms, it seemed to me, of a snowflake as drawn by a child. I walked to one of these piers, which unlike the park was deserted, as was the sea, except for the gulls and, far out in the water, two huge tankers that sat unmoving at the horizon. At the near end of the pier there was a large stone sculpture, two stylized figures in robes, who might as easily have been monks as sailors and who seemed to be embracing although they were looking away from each other, one toward the sea and one toward the shore, an image of irreconcilable desires. The stone was pocked and scarred, already dissolving in the abrasive air. I walked the length of the pier, which was lined with huge stone objects shaped like jacks from the children’s game, a defense against the heavier element of the sea. I walked to the farthest point of the pier, to its very edge, and spent some time looking at these stones and at the white froth surging between them. I felt the pressure of the water striking the stones and the steadfastness of their resistance, of what seems like their resistance and is simply a slower giving way. The snow was easing now though the wind was still fierce, the air tossed the birds as wildly as the sea. I could already sense remorse gathering, it was distant and abstract still but I knew it would flood in, that it would be terrible, and as I watched the motion of the sea I accused myself, thinking bitterly oh, what have I done. I stood there until I was chilled beneath my clothes and my face was numb with cold. Then I turned and walked back toward the shore, stamping my feet a little to quicken the sluggish blood.

 
    I was in the middle of a sentence when there was a knock at the door and a woman entered my classroom without a word. I knew her, of course, she worked in the front office of my school, but there was something in her manner that checked my greeting before I spoke it, perhaps her silence or the oddly formal way she carried the single, unfolded page in her hand, so that she walked toward me through an atmosphere strangely ruffled or unquiet, in which my interrupted sentence still hung. The students perked up at her knock, not that they had been to that point bored exactly, but any interruption is welcome, and especially when it suggests some hidden drama, as when this woman, whom I considered almost a friend, who had always been kind to me and who surely thought she was doing me a kindness now, walked quickly but with a subdued manner to deliver me what she held. I found myself flustered as I took the page from her hand, standing