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She stood at the helm, pounded by rain, quarreling with her place on the sea. The nauseating falls from crest to trough, the loss of horizon, the boat was at the mercy of the waves and nothing else. The more she fought, the more the sea tried to expel her. Only when she embraced the storm did the calm return, the skies cleared, the horizon came into view. Only then could she settle below deck, the gentle lapping on the hull a lullaby for sleep.

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For anyone watching, her sorrow was evident, arms crossed and grasping at her sides, eyes red and swollen. The room was crowded with people she had known for years, acquaintances and friends, and on that day, they should have been one in the same. Yet on that day, they might as well be strangers, all save for one. As she turned to leave, he stepped in her way. He spoke no words, but his arms, tightly wrapped around her, said everything.

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He refused to stop the car. She had no choice but to open the door and jump. She felt her sweater slide through his fumbling fingers, a sensation that played out in slow motion before the impact jarred her consciousness. She tumbled across the gravel, her skin marrying with the rocks that sliced and shredded it. Then the sharp awakening of the road transformed into a profound fear as she plummeted off the side of the cliff.

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He woke at 4 a.m. to begin his nineteen-hour-long ride for the day after sleeping for less than two hours. He had heard stories of other cyclists hallucinating from deprivation, but thus far, his training had spared him of such complications. But twelve hours in, the muscles in his legs began to seize. Then a truck swerved and flipped in front of him, its load exploding. His legs, no longer his own, pedaled straight for the flames.

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She dug the hole and sunk a five-gallon bucket into the ground. Across the top, she lay twigs and leaves, concealing the opening. By morning, her crude trap had caught two rats. By lunchtime, she had skinned and gutted the rodents, and added them to two potatoes and a cup of acorn flour in a pot of boiling water. By dinnertime, her family had joined her around the dining table for their Thanksgiving feast.

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The view hovering above the baking asphalt oscillated in the heat. Dehydrated and plagued with exhaustion, she stumbled along the road having given up running a while back. After a few misguided steps on the black tarmac, the rubber soles of her shoes had begun to melt. She took to walking on the white line that separated the lane from the shoulder, it being a few precious degrees cooler potentially saved her life.

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The driver asked her a question that she did not understand. When she failed to respond, he asked it again, repeating the same foreign words, emphasizing one at a time. She pulled a business card from her bag and showed him the address scribbled on the back. He shook his head and mumbled under his breath words with a lost translation but a tone direct and universally condescending. Regardless, he put the taxi in drive and she was on her way.

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With a pick axe and a shovel, she ripped out the grass from the small plot of lawn behind her house. She tilled the soil and then planted the seeds that she had acquired by way of trading her mother’s quilt and a ball of twine. In a few weeks, she would have thriving rows of wild asparagus, fireweed, and cattails, all of which were edible, all of which were essential for surviving her new way of life.

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His attempts had failed to find fault in her argument. She had a stronghold on her position, a tenacious monopoly on logic and reason that he could not diffuse. Her case was impenetrable. She was impenetrable. Yet he was apparently transparent. He could feel her eyes burning marks of wrongdoing onto his bare back, she staring through the screen, child on her hip, watching him pace the yard, fuming over his newly found vulnerability.

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Through native eyes, he saw what others did not. He saw beyond the hand washed cars and the manicured gardens, beyond the good day well-wishes and welcome-home kisses. Beyond the facades, he would see the truth as people approach each other on the street, paint their faces with smiles, greet each other with inquiry, and then continue on, letting their joyful expressions fall away, annulled and forgotten.

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He stood at the sink, quiet and detached from the flow of relatives moving through his kitchen. They loaded their plates with hors d'oeuvres a plenty, pilfering the table before disappearing into the living room. Their voices filled the house with superficial chatter, which his own apathetic ears muffled and dismissed. Everyone was talking to someone, consulting with someone, comforting someone, but no one was comforting him.

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She could picture the news crews outside the house, vans with satellite dishes on their roofs, reporters on their lawn with microphones in outstretched arms, all pointing toward him standing on the front step. Simultaneously, they would ask him to comment, ask him if he saw it coming. They would quote him saying he was devastated, that he should have done something more, but in reality and off the record, he was elated.

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Her closet was full of unworn clothes, tags still attached; the cupboards with unopened packages of pasta and cans of soup; her bookcases with unwrinkled bindings of national bestsellers and trinkets from every souvenir shop she managed to walk by. Never feeling much affinity for the title of shoplifter, and certainly not for thief, she liked to call herself a borrower. She never kept what she stole, and that is the fact that matters.

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She wrote weekly letters to him. The gifts of time and consideration she felt were priceless, and in those few minutes, she was completely devoted to him, undeterred and occupied with no other. She addressed them with great regard, checking accuracy and clarity twice before sliding them through the narrow slit at the post office. Then came the day when the letters returned, envelope after envelope stamped Address Unknown.

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She was kneeling above the tide pool, poking a sea anemone with her finger, observing it recoil and close around an absent meal. The waves were breaking just beyond the rocks, sending the tide swirling through the channels, marooning her temporarily in a systematic pattern of flood and retreat. At the sound of her name called from the shore, she stood, and at the same instant spotted a sleeper wave coming right toward her.

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He could close his eyes and images would fill the underside of his eyelids. The vividness before him drew on his other senses, recalling sounds and smells of the very moment it happened, transporting him back in time, planting his feet in the very middle. The therapist had labeled his memory eidetic and proceeded in attempts to compliment such a thing. But all he heard was another reason to support the current isolation he endured.

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She was standing in front of the countless teas, trying to make a decision. He was at the opposite end of the aisle, willing himself to focus on the boxed cake mixes instead of his growing infatuation with her. While choosing a tea, she seemed to have unknowingly dropped her shopping list on the floor. Once she was out of sight, he rushed to where the small slip of paper lay. However, upon pickup, he noticed it wasn't a list at all.

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She leaped from the cliff and dove to find the entrance. The opening, slightly larger than her shoulders, was nearly hidden, half guarded by a protruding boulder. She grabbed hold of the rock and pulled her body against the current into the cave, the effort depleting precious oxygen. She doubted her abilities, her choice to see this to an end. Just when she thought she should turn back, the dark water up ahead began to glow green.

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He waited for her to cross the parking lot and disappear into the store before emerging from behind a nearby truck, looking over his shoulder as he walked to her car. The bag was sitting in plain view on the passenger seat. He inserted a flat piece of metal into the door and pulled up the lock in seconds. He had warned her the old car made her easy prey, but he never imagined he would be the one taking advantage of her.

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She had never met the man who sat beside her on the train that morning. He was filing his ticket in his wallet when a photograph fell out and she retrieved it from beneath the seat for him. They chatted for the few additional minutes until his stop, at which point she gave him her card. That afternoon, she was expecting his voice when she picked up her office phone, instead, she heard the voice of the woman in the photograph.