PROLOGUE-

It had nearly been a year. A year since mother had died. Times were tough, not only for the family but also for the whole country. That is what father told us at the time. We didn't have a lot of money. Father worked all day long: at the ship yard in the mornings, the market in the afternoon and at Jervis' on the weekends. That was enough to put food on the table. Things started getting better when she came, the woman from the east. Father told us that she was a blessing from the ocean. She was here to help us and save us. At first I was the only one to believe this but then things started to change and the boys started to believe too. Father was right. She really was a blessing from the ocean.

TWENTY YEARS EARLIER-

The country was in deep. The economy had plummeted immensely in the past five years. No one had money. The rich became poor and the poor became poorer. The whole country was in trouble. The value of money had decreased all over the world which made it harder to pay off the debts from the war. Nearly every man was working two jobs to provide for his family and even the women started working again. Job creation was to a bare minimum everywhere.

Merrick Smith worked all day at the ship yard. Irene Smith worked in the factory in the mornings when the children: Thomas (15), Keifer (12), and young Haven (8) stayed at home with Louise, the nanny. Everything was well for the Smith family despite the Depression. On their property by the Cape they lived well, content with everything that they had. Most importantly, they were happy, happy until that warm October day. That is when calamity struck.

"Dad, do you think we could go down to the beach for a few hours today?" asked Thomas.

"Yeah! It is so nice and warm out" echoed Keifer.

"Daddy, please? I want to play in the sand with my new doll! I need to build her a sand castle; mommy said she would help me!" called Haven.

Merrick thought about it for a second and within a few minutes the family was trekking down the path from the house to the coast. Irene packed a picnic lunch and gave Louise the day off. Thomas, Keifer, and Merrick ran straight for the water and started to swim in the salty cape. Irene and Haven stayed up on the sand a little ways from the shoreline and started making Haven's new doll a grand castle out of the wet and warm sand. The boys swam off onto the distant, small island to try and catch some crabs for dinner. On the shore line approached wave after wave, the tide was coming in. Everything seemed to be perfect in the world at this moment. The boys off in the distance started to swim back due to no luck with the fish or crabs.

"BOO!" screamed the boys in unison.

Both of the girls let out a yelp as they fell back into the sand. The boys had no luck crabbing and had worked up an appetite from swimming back and forth between the mainland and the small, distant island. Both of the girls were now coated in a layer of grainy wet sand from the now crushed sand palace. Haven walked into the water a little ways to get most of the sand off of herself so she would be clean to help set up the picnic lunch on the beach. She laid down the quilt, which her mother and she had made, on the warm sand under the hot sun and started setting out the food. The boys went up to the house to get the forgotten plates for the food and to get the cold lemonade from the ice box. Irene waded into the ocean to wash the sand off of herself from where she had fallen into the sand. She started walking back to the shore when time stopped. A feeling of gloom fell over everything, even the happy family.

The sky turned gray. Haven heard the water start to swell up, the boys stood at the edge of the grass and sand. The wind was blowing sand in the air all around getting on everything and everyone, the sea grass was being pushed down by the forceful wind. The wave started to rise, breaking fifteen feet away from the shore line. Just like that it had happened. Irene was dragged under the salt water of the suddenly furious ocean. A whirlpool situated itself on the surface. Her arms were bobbing in and out of the water. She tried swimming out but only found herself being dragged back into the center. She was incapable of swimming up for air, one breath underwater and her lungs filled with water, asphyxiating her in an instant as her children and husband could do nothing but stand and stare.

Irene Smith. Thirty years old. Wife to Merrick Smith, mother to three children: Thomas, Keifer, and Haven. Gone.

ONE MONTH LATER- Merrick's Journal

It has been a month since the tragedy. My sweet, sweet Irene is gone. An unfathomable thought, yes, but it actually happened. It seems that the children are coping with the incident better than I am. The poor children. Their own mother. Motherless? How would that feel? I remember a time when I was a child when my mother left for a two day trip to the west with her sister. That was an awful two days. I cannot imagine a life time. Poor Haven. She is only eight and already has lost her mother. We all saw it happen. Watched her die. That is the worst of it. One thing is to have your mother be dead but another is that watch it happen. Tragedy…

The funeral was small. Friends and family. It was a depressing day for us all of course but the strong dismal storms have just made it worse. The children will not go near the water. They wont even say the word. Water. Who knew that such a simple and tranquil thing could be so evil and disheartening? Why would God do such a thing? Take away such a pure heart, a mother and a wife. They say that he works in interesting and mysterious ways and maybe this is his way of telling us something. Did we need to learn a lesson? What are we supposed to do about something like death? All we can do now is try and recover.

Now that she is unable to work at the factory I have been forced to take on two jobs and am hardly ever home. I have started working at the market in the afternoons and have been helping Old Man Jarvis on his fishing boat on the weekend mornings. Louise has been such a great help to the children, helping them cope with our loss.

For the time to come,

Merrick Smith.

The dismal storms have been taking over the coast. Everyday something new in a new place. The Cape is slowly being blown away by the strong winds and the sun hasn't shown through the thick gray clouds for a month. The beach has remained untouched since the event. The quilt, the basket, everything left where it was put. No one went to retrieve it and it was never returned. The storms had taken it all. Taken it far away just as it had taken the families happiness; the happy family was now feeling the depression just as the rest of the country had been for years.

Merrick needed some time to recover away from the Cape, away from society, and away form the ship yard.

"Kids, come here please." called Merrick down the hall.

All three of the kids lurched down the steps and into the kitchen where Merrick was standing, ready to tell the children his plans for the weekend.

"What is it daddy?" asked young Haven. "Is something wrong?"

Something indeed was wrong and had been wrong for quite some time. What wasn't wrong? The country was in the midst of the biggest debt in history. The small town off of the Cape was failing to sustain business and most important and tragic, Irene Smith was dead. Was anything okay?

"I know we have all been having a hard time recently but I am having a very hard time with a lot of things now" said Merrick.

Money was tight for the whole country but especially in the town. How much money could people bring home? Everything was near worthless and an economy based off of sea food and boating equipment wasn't enough to provide for your family. No one had money to buy expensive fish or lobster or had enough money to buy new nets or cages. You had to make what you had work. Businesses were constantly failing and leaving town due to lack of business. Without providers the consumers started to leave also. No one had come in or out of the cape in weeks. No boats. No visitors. Nothing but the few families that had no choice but to stay. Everyone was left to fend for themselves. That is how to whole country was operating and had been for years.

"I'm sorry to tell you but I will not be home this weekend. Jervis was kind enough to let me have tomorrow and the day after off of work so I could have some time to get away and try and fix things."

"We understand" chimed Haven.

Did anyone understand? Surely his family could. Haven was just a small child, could she understand anything other than the alphabet and how to count to one hundred? She understood the whole lot that no one understood. A mother and daughter bond had been broken. Haven was the closest to her mother. Thomas and Keifer of course we close but tended to favor their father. They wanted to be big strong men like he was but what they did not know was that he was not at all strong. Grief and turmoil had slowly taken him over and made him weak on the inside. Merrick tried to hold himself together everyday to make his children happy to help them get through this tough time.

"I am going to just go away for a day. I will be back by tomorrow night after supper. Please do not give Louise any trouble. She is in charge of you and you need to listen to her. Don't worry about me, I will be okay by myself." Merrick stated.

"Where are you going to go, father?" asked Keifer.

That was the issue. Merrick did not know where he was going to go. He just planned on walking and seeing where his feet would take him.

"I am going to pack a bag with food and walk down the coast. I am going to go find something for each of you. Something that will help you get through this. I will be back tomorrow night. I will see you all in the morning. Now get up to bed."

The three children all turned around and walked up to their rooms to sleep. What Merrick really needed was to find something for himself and by taking this trip that is what he hoped to do. Early the next morning he set out with his bag of food and a few dollars he had saved for a long time. He went to each of the sleeping children to kiss them goodbye but found Havens bed empty. He searched the house for her. Opening all of the cupboards, looking under all the beds, searching the attic and all the rooms, she was no where to be seen. Merrick stepped outside into the cool salt air. The clouds had started disappearing and the moon was still beaming down onto the cape water. He walked down to the shoreline to the trail and saw a small shadow formed on the sand. There she was, sitting on the quilt that she had laid out on the sad day, the day that her mother had died. Still there, the quilt seemed untouched by anything. Not a speck of sand, or water on the quilt. It was perfect. The first perfect thing in a long time. The wind blew through Havens soft dark hair and pushed it to the side. Merrick slowly stepped towards her with caution. He stood behind her and watched. He did not move or make a noise. The only movement seemed to not be coming from the waves or the wind but from Haven herself. She was moving everything with her thoughts. This is where she watched her mother die, right in the very spot she was sitting. Her screams still lingered in the air as if they were new. A tear slowly dripped its way down her face. Slower than the day it all happened. The tear landed on the quilt like an atomic bomb, exploding on the happiness that the quilt brought to Haven. The memories that it had brought her were now flooded by tears, ruined the perfection.

Merrick walked over to Haven and sat down on the quilt with her. Haven remained looking into the depths of the ocean and the sky, through the horizon and past all consciousness into the realm of the unknown which was the future. Merrick couldn't do anything but the same and stare off into the unknown as well. He felt a tear run down his face. Two tears for the future, flooding the memories that this beach brought, that the smell of the ocean salt breeze had reconciled, corrupted the peace and perfection.

Merrick kissed Haven on the head and whispered goodbye and left. He started off on the path that joined with the road a mile up. The sun was starting to rise now. Another day that he and his family would have to live with the loss of a loved one, but Merrick was determined to change that as quick as possible. He was tired of the moping around and not caring. The fake smiles and getting up every morning forcing himself out of bed, forcing himself to go to work and forcing himself to leave his aching children behind at home. There was a better off, well town a few miles down from the Cape and that is where Merrick was going to try and fix everything. His hopes were to find something that could help the children. Was it okay to leave the small cape home and come live in a better place where they were not reminded daily of the events that had taken place in their own back yard? Was it even feasible to move at this time? Merrick had little money and moving was expensive, especially in a time like this. A mile down the path, where it met the road, the clouds started to form again, hiding the sunrise from ever being seen. Without time it was impossible to tell if it was still night. Had everyone been stuck in that wretched night forever? Was time repeating itself? The war, the crash of the economy, the death of Irene, and the storms. Just when Merrick thought things were getting better, things were getting worse.