The wind pressed gently against her back, lifting the canvas of the sail like breath in a lung. The boat — once a wreck — now moved with a quiet grace, cutting through the waves as if it remembered what it meant to float.
Mara stood at the helm, hands steady. Jonah sat beside her, holding a thermos of coffee, grinning like a proud uncle.
"Didn't think she'd sail this smooth," he said.
Mara smiled. "She's stubborn. Like me."
They didn't speak for a while, letting the ocean do the talking. The town was a small line in the distance now — behind them, but not lost. The sun painted the water gold, and for the first time in years, Mara didn't feel like she was drifting.
She was sailing forward.
Later that week, she passed a girl crying outside the old bookstore. Maybe seventeen. Shaky hands, mascara smudged like warpaint.
Mara hesitated, then sat beside her on the curb.
"You okay?"
The girl didn't answer.
Mara reached into her bag and handed over her journal — not the one with Eliot's letters, but the new one. The one she'd just begun. Only a few pages in.
"You don't have to talk," she said. "But sometimes writing helps. Doesn't need to make sense."
The girl looked at the journal like it might burn her.
Then she took it.
That night, Mara wrote one more letter. This one wasn't to Eliot. Or her past self.
It was to no one — and maybe everyone.
Some loves are oceans.
Some are rain.
Some drown you slowly, without ever meaning to.
But if you survive the wreck, you learn to build lighthouses.
I'm building one now.
Come find me if you're lost.