Miss Abernathy has brought her nieces to the beach. Osie and Lilibet are 16. Miss Abernathy is 32. Miss Abernathy knows both girls believe she is older than the Atlantic Ocean. And this year she is twice their age. But next year the difference will be a little less. And the year after that, they will slip further along the linear narrative of numbers which bring them closer and closer to where she stands, windblown in her buttoned-up aqua-blue. Math is not your friend she would love to tell them–just wait and see–each year an addition which is really a subtraction, a taking away, the math of mirrors where left is right, and what you see isn’t at all real. Too much time spent worrying about curves and angles and wayward lines. But she won’t say a word. She’ll help them to enjoy the day, the sunshine, the sky, the sand. Let’s discard caution with our shoes and walk into the water, she shouts against the cry of gulls. The girls don’t hear her–her voice blown out across the waves.