Chapter 1: Ocean Words and Quiet Warnings
It was an ordinary Thursday—one of those afternoons where the world feels soft around the edges. The kind of day when nothing extraordinary should happen. Tess, my four-year-old daughter, had just finished preschool. Her pink sneakers were kicked off in the backseat, her hair half-undone from the pigtails I’d carefully fixed that morning. A single fruit snack clung stubbornly to her leggings, and she hummed quietly to herself as we drove through golden sunlight toward home.
