Christmas, 1999

"And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time..."

-Taylor Caldwell

Alone.

Katie replaced the receiver into its cradle and sunk her head into her hands. She had to swallow down the bile rising in her throat with effort, such effort, but this year had been an exercise in making an effort. If nothing else, Katie Beckett had learned how to swallow it down.

Rage. Fear. Disgust. Desperation.

Loneliness.

Her father's words echoed in the damp mist of her grief, I've sold the apartment; I couldn't stay. I know you're disappointed, but it's an obstacle to my sobriety. Said in that too-easy voice that meant he was currently drunk and pretending he wasn't. Said with a nasty bite at the end that meant this is how I cope.

She understood; she did. Neither of them were doing well without Mom. If it really was a choice, she'd rather have her father than the apartment she'd grown up in. But most of her memories had been tainted by her mother's murder, and the cleaving of her home was a blow more devastating than she'd let herself believe.

Her father had said nothing about Christmas. Or where he was right now.

Katie had been expecting something. Not Christmas, no. But a shared misery. Misery shared could be endured.

But she was truly alone.

The dorm was drafty, and sitting at the rickety card table that passed for eat-in kitchen space made her joints ache. She had to lift her head, get up, get moving. Exams might be finished for the fall semester, but there were all the optional reading materials she'd elected not to plow through, thinking she'd been doing good just to pass this year. She'd taken the second semester of her freshman year as a break, and she hadn't returned to Stanford, instead transferring to NYU to be close to her dad.

Who didn't know what to do with her. Or the reflection of his grief in her eyes.

She might as well be in California.

She might as well be anywhere but here.

Maybe her dad had had the right idea after all. Get away from it. Wallowing, that's what she was doing here, Christmas in New York City like it was the same as it had ever been. It wasn't the same. She was drifting, taking general education classes and nearly failing all of them. She was without a rudder. She'd been on track to graduate Stanford with top honors, and she'd set her sights on Harvard Law to complete her degree; she knew the plan, clerking for a judge, the fastest route to the Supreme Court she could manage. Sandra Day O'Connor, and Katie's own mother—those had been her role models, her heroes, and not a little bit of worship had filled her head.

What had her mother been doing in that alley?

It gnawed at her, day and night, and no amount of Sandra Day O'Connor idolization could wipe out the death in her mother's unnatural face, the mask of rigor mortis that day at the funeral home.

Katie wandered into the room she shared with her roommate, a slovenly girl from Ohio who had gone with her parents to Aruba for Christmas break. She stared through the grimy dormer window out at the city, the pallor of a sky burdened with lurking rain. Aruba. California. Someplace warm. Someplace not here.

She woke her computer and sat down at the Blueberry iMac's fat gnomelike shell, waited for it to connect to the internet. While she waited, she pulled out the savings account her father had opened for her on January 13th, ran her finger over the two entries in the ledger. Deposit. Deposit. The first being liquidated assets her father had moved into her name, and the second being the lump sum from her mother's life insurance policy.

To prevent the police from suspecting him for murder.

Katie shivered, but the number remained obscenely large.

All in her name. Her father had no access to it, had not mentioned it since handing her the checkbook and picking up the glass of wine.

Such a classy start. Such a rich kid in Manhattan start.

Anywhere but here.

She began searching for a flight.

Katie Beckett hoisted her back-up on her shoulders and pulled her hair out from the straps, staring straight ahead as the passengers began to disembark. A waft of warm air came through the small cabin, followed by a lighter breeze, and she saw coats and sweaters being stuffed into packs, people freeing themselves up, relaxing into the California sunshine. There was a thirty-five degree difference between there and here.

"Is someone meeting you?" the pilot asked, one arm over head and leaning into it.

"Yes," she lied, kept moving forward.

Realized, belatedly, he'd been asking her out.

She was middle of the line as they trooped down the short flight of mobile stairs to the tarmac. Eddie Addreini Airfield was mostly deserted, and the glass and chrome structure that supported what few travelers came in this close to Half Moon Bay was a beacon of reflective sunlight.

She had arranged for a rental car from a tourism service, and it was waiting as promised, the keys at the lone airline desk. She had only her backpack, and she slung it into the passenger's side before tucking her long legs below the steering wheel and starting it up.

The slate blue BMW Z3 purred as it came to life, its rounded body giving a faint shiver of anticipation. Katie had gone with the coupe, but part of her wished the convertible had been available; taking the coastal roads with the top down and the sun glinting on the hood of the car would have been a real thrill.

As it was, she followed the print MapQuest directions and her own notations without issue. She stopped for supplies at a general feed store, talked to no one. Back in the car, hair tangled with ocean breeze, sunlight making her face taut. Redwoods Preserve was on her left in no time, a sticky feeling at the small of her back as she sweat in her flannel shirt and black tank. Doc Martens had been a trusty idea in NYC, but out here, she was regretting not slipping a pair of flip flops into her pack.

She'd go barefoot. Tank top and boy shorts, and she'd never have to meet another soul.

Lobitos was a spot on a map and a cliffside to the ocean. She was taking dirt trails that abused the undercarriage of the BMW but she didn't care. As the trees closed around her, the constriction in her chest began to ease.

When the cabin came into view, it was a revelation, a shiver of mirage from tree and sky and earth that hadn't been there one minute and yet in the next breath it was. She parked, stepped out on pine needles and winter detritus, and took a deep breath.

Old. Ancient. Other.

Maybe 1999 could be partially redeemed.

No.

Maybe it could finally be endured.

She had three days and two nights booked at the cabin atop a cliff beside the ocean. During her time at Stanford, one of the girls in the sorority she had been interested in pledging had been from Half Moon Bay, had constantly dropped it into casual conversation in a way that hadn't been annoying or eye-rolling, but pleasant, persuasive, intriguing. She'd thought to book the full winter break, but the price had been extraordinary, and it was her mother's money.

Three days was really all she needed.

Katie had debated Big Sur, for the beach access, but Half Moon Bay's redwoods on one side and beaches the other were slightly more obscure and far easier for her to navigate, travel-wise. She had discovered this place while scrolling through travel agencies online, an angelfire-hosted website with grainy scanned photos. She expected, stepping over the threshold, black widow spiders and no furniture, squirrel nests and a hot plate and a troubling lack of conveniences. She was paying, after all, for the location.

Instead, it was appealingly sparse: the cot boasted flannel sheets and a sleeping bag; a stack of milk crates held a handful of well-thumbed books; the hot plate was built into a cabinet stocked with not-yet-expired canned goods; and the one spider she confronted had a web in a corner beside a working toilet. Katie was content to let it spin, and hope it caught whatever insects might not have been scared off by her arrival.

She tossed her backpack on the cot and swung the six pack onto the cabinet (her supplies, fancy local beer; she had not been carded, though she had the fake ID ready). She grabbed the first beer, knocked the top off against the edge of the formica, took a fast swig.

Another longer sip for the burn of it. She picked up one of the hardback books missing its dust jacket, but dropped it again to the cot, wandered out of the bedroom and into the living space.

There was a floor-to-ceiling window in the first of the two rooms of the cabin, and it looked straight out over the cliff. She was dizzy standing there, her heart leaping into her throat. She realized the cabin was built on struts that were anchored into the rock itself, and that at least a third of the floor of this room was out over the air.

Hanging off a cliff. Literally.

If that didn't sum up 1999, what did?

She stayed at the window, drinking, and watched the grey-blue waves smash into rocks. The beer was sour-warm, and the waves were never-ending, and she felt herself falling into them.

She tipped the bottle and nothing came out, so she returned to the six pack and took two more, replacing the empty in the slot. There's another dead soldier.

She knocked off both tops, started in on the first bottle and went back to the window. Drank. Watched the waves. Out over the cliff, the water, the vast ocean with the sun glaring over the blue and the black rocks and the buzz beginning in her head.

Hypnotic. Slamming again and again into the same black jagged rocks. Wave after wave, surging for the coastline only to be beaten back by the cliff itself.

For one strange moment, the waves went backwards.

Katie stumbled, knocked her cheekbone and the beer bottle against the glass, tried to keep her knees under her. She reared back, tearing her eyes from the sight of the world unspinning on its axis, and shook her head.

She sank down to the floor and closed her eyes, breathing hard, a weird sensation passing through her body. Like grief so powerful it could unmake her. She crawled across the thin rug to the low-slung couch and hauled herself up, onto it, dropping to her back as the cabin seemed to expand towards the ocean and shrink like light being sucked into a black hole.

She fell asleep in the rocking sensation of an ocean she was not in, dragged out to sea.

When she woke, her mouth tasted like toothpaste slapped on after four cups of coffee, and her body was the drugged heaviness of an all-nighter.

Neither of which were true.

She fell off the couch trying to get to her feet, groaned as her head swam. Not coffee, beer. Great. Beer.

She found the bottles and scooped them up, staggered, managed not to hit the floor again.

Get it together, Katie.

The bottles hit the counter, she grabbed another—was this really the last bottle of beer?—moved for the door, fresh air. She took a breath, another, and tasted pine needles and leaves, salt.

Salt and sour-bitter lager. She'd bought something California fancy, and apparently it had a higher alcohol content than she'd known, because she was tripping.

Actually tripping. She missed a step going down, almost fell, recovered with help of the wooden railing. Beer sloshed on her flannel. The pine needles were soft under her boots; she bent down and yanked out the laces, kicked them off her feet. Stripped the socks. Left them where they were, kept walking. Into the trees, into the noise of the ocean slamming itself in vain against the rocks.

The warmth of the day and the sun was beginning to leach out of her. Had she taken off the flannel? She shivered as she walked/

The rhythmic pounding of the surf seemed to enter her body, set up a counter tempo. Her tongue was furry so she took another pull on the beer and it hit her straight between the eyes. Dark and dangerous. No wonder her father couldn't keep himself out of the stuff. The sauce. The magic elixir. She bet he'd like it here, if he could bring himself to look her in the eyes ever again.

She walked off into the forest. The air was still under the trees, nothing moving. Studs of yellow flowers in sharp angles, like golden stars, dotted the underbrush, their leaves waxy and thick. Verbena, something in her supplied, verbena, even though she wasn't sure she'd ever heard the word before.

Grasses, a sandy mixture to the soil, acacia trees and beachgrass, wild oats, bullrushes, thistle, foxtails… a stand of cypress trees at the very edge of the cliff.

She could hear only the ocean, and her heartbeat, and the two fighting each other for dominance. The wind kicked up and sprayed sand against her bare arms; she was cold. She felt the dirt and sand against her feet, leaves and pine needles and those yellow flowers she crushed between her toes. She reached out and trailed her fingers against the bark of an unfamiliar tree.

Scraped the pads, the wounds burning. She watched the blood well up.

She came to the edge of the cliff.

It was not as sheer as she'd hoped. Not like in the house, where the back window was a lookout over a long endless drop. This had layers, sedimentary layers of geologic time, and she could almost see the ages unfurl as her eyes went down down down.

Paleo-zoic. Mezo-lithic. She didn't know the names. Each abrupt shift in time was a new color in the rock, from the reddish-brown rust of modern times to the deep black of water smashing against the stone age.

She stared down in those waves and felt the wind gust up the cliff, almost like a voice, blasting the hair back from her face, the chill seeping down into her bones.

In that moment, her heart synced with the ocean, and she saw it going backwards, like the motion she'd witnessed in the window, the reverse, the water sucking out, disappearing from the rocks, uncurling waves, back to the deep, retreating.

She dropped to her knees. The beer spilled into the scrub grass and sought its level, filling the deep grooves left by wind and rain, seeking the ocean below.

"Beckett."

Katie jerked, scrambled to her feet. There was nothing but air, and deep blue sky, and the ocean roaring her name.

"Beckett."

She spun around, caught a glimpse of a man, just taller than her, broad-shouldered, as golden as the California coast with eyes blue as the sky, just before he shoved her over the cliff.