Free Miracle Beach by Erin Celello

frantically from room to room in their house, hearing Nash’s words, I’ll be around. I’ll be around , and taking them for gospel.
    “Where?” he had cried out.
    In the opaque darkness, he stumbled against the buffet table in the front entranceway, knocking pictures and knickknacks to the floor. He picked one up—a silver-framed photograph of him and Nash salmon fishing north of Campbell River a few years ago. Glass shards jutted across their windblown faces, one just in front of the other, each half-hidden by the hoods on their yellow rain slickers. “Where, Nash?” he had whispered desperately, looking into the blackness of the foyer. “Where?”
    That morning, when Magda came downstairs to start the coffee, she had found Jack clutching the photograph tight to him, curled up amid a mosaic of glass shards, and fast asleep.
    He told Macy then, with Gounda’s breath moist on his outstretched hand, about how these feelings would pass. About how every time she wallowed through one of the bouts they would get easier and easier, until one day—maybe one year or ten years down the road—without her even knowing it, they would cease altogether, and she would be left with only happy memories of Nash that didn’t sear and tear when they came bubbling up.
    “How do you know?” she asked.
    The truth was, he didn’t. That was only what he told himself. Because if all the hurt and gut-gnawing emptiness didn’t ebb away over time, he didn’t think he could bear it either.

Chapter Six

    IT WASN’T EVEN SEVEN O’CLOCK, AND MAGDA WAS ALREADY TIPSY. She was sitting at a cocktail table with Ginny Fischer, one of her oldest and dearest friends, finishing a glass of white zinfandel and waiting to be seated for dinner. They were at Poultry in Motion, a hot new restaurant on De Pere’s main drag that was receiving rave reviews, but it was so busy that the restaurant had instituted a no-reservation policy. So Magda and Ginny had arrived at six o’clock sharp, expecting to beat out the seven-o’clock crowd, and had been waiting ever since. Magda had been drinking seltzer water up to a point, and then somewhere around six thirty decided to have a glass of wine, anticipating that they’d be eating soon. But here she was, no sign of a table opening up and not even a whole glass in, her toes and fingers had already starting to tingle.
    “Why, you don’t drink, Magda. What’s going on?”
    “I don’t usually drink, Ginny. That doesn’t mean that I can’t ever drink.”
    “Are we celebrating something?” asked Ginny.
    “Goodness gracious, Ginny. What do you think I have to celebrate?” Magda said.
    Ginny’s face crumpled so horribly that Magda changed her tone and added, “Well, I suppose I am celebrating a bit, with Jack gone and all. I mean, not that I don’t adore him, but I was thinking the other day—we’ve been married almost thirty-four years and haven’t ever spent much time apart. I’m enjoying this new-found freedom a little. It’s nice.”
    “I wish I had a little freedom like that,” Ginny said. “I just read this book about a woman who left her husband and family for a year and took a kayaking trip around all the Great Lakes—or maybe it was only one of the lakes—well, anyway, it was all about her spending this year on her own, and the self-discoveries she made, and then, at the end, she was more than happy to come home to her husband and such. Totally content to be back, because she had this great adventure. It left me feeling a little jealous. I’d like to do something like that. Put the spark back into things with me and Frank.”
    “You’ve lost your spark?”
    Leaning toward Magda, she asked, “Haven’t you and Jack?”
    “Well,” said Magda, “not really, no.” It wasn’t technically a lie. Truth be told, there hadn’t been a whole lot to lose.
    Magda raised her glass to take a sip of wine. The cocktail napkin stuck to the bottom. She peeled the napkin off and put it back on