Ayana had never wanted to be kept.

She had wanted to go home to the ocean.

And watching her go, with our daughter’s arms around my waist and the tide cold around my boots, I understood that the thing I had been protecting all those two years was not her.

It was my own refusal to say goodbye.

The ocean took that from me too, and I let it, and what was left when both were gone was not emptiness.

It was peace.