Cape Disappointment

   

       

            She hadn’t considered the loneliness.

When Beth chose the old family cabin that sat on the shore of Cape Disappointment, she thought she was doing her loved ones a favor. They would never find her there, she thought, they would never have to bear another loss. After all, missing still carried with it a sliver of hope. Missing was better than…

She spent her time walking barefoot across the hardwood floor, wearing only the white gown her husband had given her for their third anniversary. She would stop at the fireplace, empty except for a thin coating of ash, and study the framed photographs, covered in dust, that sat on the mantle. Pictures of her parents when they were young and optimistic, before life and loss had worn them down. Pictures of her and her two brothers, happy and naïve, before adulthood stripped them of their innocence. She attempted to get lost in the photos, to travel back, to better times, only to find herself stuck in the current moment, longing for a way out.

Upstairs, in the master bedroom, she would gaze out the cracked window at the waves, massive and white, as they battled against the rocky shore with a force so imposing she found it hard to believe they weren’t living, breathing creatures. She recalled a time when her only son would play too close to the turbulent waters and she would voice her concern for his safety, only to have her husband reassure her again and again that kids will be kids and you must let him be. She never argued with him then, though now she wished she had. And through the window, every once in a while, she thought she saw a small boy playing in the surf, though always, in the blink of an eye, he disappeared.

After the sun went down, and unable to sleep, she sat in the dark, in an old wooden rocking chair next to the fireplace, the one where her mother would read her nursery rhymes as the flames danced on the logs, the one where she had read the same lines to her own child decades later. Now she simply sat, no rhymes, no rocking, only waiting for the Earth to turn, for the sun to illuminate her world for another day.

Several years had passed since anyone had visited the cabin, several years since the accident, which was the very reason she chose it in the first place. And yet now she longed for a guest, anyone, a family member, a friend, a friend of a friend, a real estate agent there to sell the dilapidated building, a contractor sent to tear it down. She would even settle for vandals, teenagers with only destruction on their minds. Unable to leave, she walked the floors, longing for someone, anyone, to haunt…