Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about....

Margaux was older and wiser now and knew the waves couldn’t fix what was wrong in her life, but at least they might give her some temporary respite.

Strength ebbed and flowed, but brittle would break.

It seemed as if the longer she lived, the more was taken from her. Not gradually, as old age fell into the inevitable, but lobbed off in great chunks, the healthy branches sacrificed along with...

Bad memories were hard enough, but it was torture to be haunted by the good.