He put his hand out as if to offer it to the expanse and concede defeat to the vastness of the water before him. The Lake he loved so much had taken his child without warning or reason.

“A better place?” What better place could there be for a little girl than here, rolling in these waves and morning sunshine. He had remarked how harmless it was for her to be here with no jellyfish, no sharks and no rip tides to worry about.

The absence of these things would bring him back here time and time again with her and then finally in ruins without her. He was not aware that complacency was the prevailing predator here.

Bent over now with his hands on his upper thighs he heaved slightly to think of the fear she felt while he was distracted, looking away, trusting the odds. Rip tide or no rip tide she was gone.

He felt a few spitting rain drops on his upper back and watched the blackness grow on the other side as it rolled his way across the lake. He sent his anger out at the water only to decide that it had had no real part in the thing.

He crossed off a short list of people and circumstances to blame and wound up down to only himself.

He could imagine tomorrow and carrying on. Food. The morning buzz of coffee, The warmth of satisfying his social media addiction and closing his heart and thoughts in order to survive it. That was imaginable but hardly doable. Life would forever be swallowed with at best sand and at worst guilt. Always crushing guilt. Nothing would exist without the thing. He was thirty nine and had many mornings to wake up to realize that it’s not a horrible dream.

He led his kayak knee deep along the shore in procrastination while the punishing waves smashed into him. He rolled his paddle around in his hand and gripped it tightly. The rising wind was a gift, its timing undeniable. He began to feel warm in spite of the cold rain. He felt joy now as he paddled out past the break and out of sight to hold her