My friend Bastet challenged us to a Power Short with the theme “Romance”. Her’s was great. [see it here] Mine was… long. With her usual brilliance, Bastet collaborated to cut it back. Still too long, but here is our joint effort.

WAITING

She squinted up at her granddaughter. “I’ve been coming to this beach for seventy-odd years. You don’t need to wait here with me.” 

She remembered summer mornings with him, sailing their little boat, her red silk scarf as their flag. Long afternoons they drifted, slept, tried out kissing, talked about sailing a bigger boat across the lake, then the ocean. They waited.

One morning, her stomach cramped. Her mother said no more sailing with him. On the third day that she didn’t go to the dock, her mother brought news. The boat floated back, but he was gone. She waited.

She married one of the young men her brother brought home. Every summer she brought her children, then her grandchildren, to the lake. She waited.

“Nana?”

There, footprints down to the waterfront, a small boat almost invisible against the sunlight, something red streaming in the wind.

“Nana, where are you?” She waited.