What the Pools Remember

The morning low tide has pulled the sea back to its farthest reach, and the boardwalk at Fenwick Cove hangs over a maze of revealed rock pools. You came here to sit with your grief — three weeks since your grandmother passed — and found instead that someone else has recently been here too. A notebook lies open on the railing, soaked at one corner, and from somewhere out along the pools comes the strangest scent: warm cedar and pressed flowers, exactly like her parlour. You are not ready to leave. You are not sure what you are looking for. But your feet are already moving toward the smell.