The Other Side of Blue by Valerie O. Patterson

the road at the top of the hill, or people who come from the grand houses, like the one we rent, along the shore. At dawn and dusk, the light here is almost reddish. I’m not sure why, whether it’s the slant of the sun or some base color under the sand that comes out only at the ends of day. The full sun bleaches everything out.
    We’re the only beachgoers today. I pick a spot and start pounding stakes into the sand, the mallet making a hollow sound as it strikes.
    â€œIt is too the right color.” Kammi doesn’t give up. She plops down on her bottom on a red beach towel like a two-year-old child would. “It’s just this shade.”
    â€œThe light in the boathouse is no good.” The mallet strikes until the wood sinks into the sand, and I fight to put up the tent. The loose fabric flaps in the wind like a flock of silk saris, the kind Mrs. Bindas’s servants hang on the line by their beach. The saris catch the breeze and dry in under an hour. Not enough time to fade, she said once to Mother when they stood talking at the farm market. Mrs. Bindas
held an armful of mangoes and Mother a clutch of watercolor pencils she’d brought to match the colors in the market.
    â€œThey smell so fresh, like the sea,” Mrs. Bindas said about the saris.
    But the sea doesn’t always smell fresh—sometimes it reeks of marine life stranded ashore by low tide, and it tastes like tears.
    The salt air burns my eyes.
    â€œBut if we open the doors—”
    â€œNo.” I wrap my hands around the cloth, squeeze. “Grab that end, will you?” Be useful, that’s what I want to say. Why I don’t, I’m not sure. Most of this past year I’ve said anything that popped into my head.
    Kammi fights to hold on to a corner of the cloth, and I wrestle it into place. Now we have a four-foot square of shade between us to share.
    While Kammi pulls out her art supplies, arranging the Caran d’Ache watercolor pencils, the kind Mother would buy, around the blanket like a color wheel, I stare at the sea. She opens the water bottle and pours some into a small cup. She settles herself, flips over a fresh sheet of drawing paper, and pauses. I sense her close her eyes, centering herself. Mother does that, too, like she would a yoga pose, a breathing exercise to push away distractions.
    In the distance, a fishing boat, probably heading from Venezuela to the floating market at Otrobanda, chugs along.
The wavelike shape of the prow reminds me again of the boat in the boathouse. Kammi’s too busy settling herself to see it, to notice it’s like the other one, the one I won’t let her draw.
    â€œSince my dad’s been gone,” Kammi begins. She doesn’t mention the divorce. She says “gone,” almost as if it were a passive act. Something done to him, to her. She takes a deep breath. “Ever since then, it’s just been Mom and me. Mom says she won’t marry anyone else. She won’t even date. I sort of thought ... well, I sort of thought that meant he might come back, you know?” She looks at me from under the hat and tears start to well in her eyes.
    I thought my dad would come back, too. Even after they found his body trapped in the netting. Even after the boat was hauled onto the sand and into the boathouse. I thought he’d just swim out of the sea and laugh at me for worrying. Water and sand would stream down his face and body, making unexpected sand castles at his feet.
    I stare at the sea. It feels possible even now, though I know it can’t happen.
    â€œLast fall, Dad came down to Atlanta for parents’ weekend,” Kammi says. “He said he’d come all the way from Maine for me.”
    The sand shifts under my feet. “When?”
    â€œOctober.”
    Last Columbus Day weekend, Mother attended the
opening of her retrospective in Atlanta. She hired a departmental graduate assistant—to house-sit, she