Not a deception.

A gift, wrapped in the only paper that would let me receive it.

Chapter 8 — The Ocean

Of all the places I took Julian in those six weeks, the one that stays with me most is the coast, a particular stretch of the Maine shoreline where the land ends in a high stone bluff and the gray-green water throws itself against the granite far below.

I had asked him where he wanted to go, on the day I promised him the ocean, and he had named that exact place without hesitation, as though he had been thinking about it for a long time.