The living room was quiet except for the soft hum of the dishwasher and the occasional rustle of pages turning. Mara sat on the couch, half-listening as her youngest, Nora, read aloud from the school library book they’d brought home that week. Upstairs, her older daughter, Talia, was finishing a science project at the desk they’d squeezed into the corner of her room.

Walter is feeling pleased with himself, barreling along the Autopista del Mediterráneo, or “AP-7,” as they call it, that starts way up by the French border, on his way to pick up Anna at the airport. It is a soft warm evening in September, the kind they take for granted now, the two of them, having lived on the Costa Blanca for fourteen years.

The southeast winds blew gently, caressingly, full of medicinal salts, carried in from the Atlantic Ocean, and fragrances from the vegetation on the shorelands that continued to emit spicy intoxicants ahead of the winter solstice. Bella and Beetle, two lovers on the barrier beach, lay within each other’s arms intertwined like one being, warmed by the burning driftwood they had collected and placed in the fire pit Beetle had dug.

I have walked this winding road a thousand times, though I swear it changes its face whenever I return.
Some days it greets me with the quiet of rain-soaked earth, other days with a brittle wind that sounds almost like a voice trying to call me back. I tell myself this is only memory playing tricks but yet memory has always been the wiser of us two.

He never liked smoking. He only liked the smoke—coiling, hovering, just above him,
a downpour held in suspension.
He loved that suspension.
She never liked heels. She only liked the sound they made on the floor—tap, tap, tap.
Like the way her heartbeat quickened whenever she passed his desk.
She loved that quickening.
He liked getting to the office early, making himself a cup of coffee. He would lean back against the wall.

Margie Olivia Murphy studied her desk calendar. She searched for time to verify the sparrow-sized bird with greenish-yellow breast and lavender wings—reported roosting at a nearby park by birding newbies—was the rare orchid oriole. If true, it would be number 748 on her Audubon Life List. She ran a finger down today’s box—2:30 Lena driving lesson/bank, 3:05 doggie day care Izzy pick-up, 3:45 Lena drop-off swim practice, 4:05 call Senator Hewett’s assistant–God update…

Malia wrapped her fingers around the steering wheel. A foggy feeling enveloped her, the same as it had every day this past year. Pushing through the heaviness of insomnia was a daily battle. Highway 406 stretched further than either she or her son John could see. She tried to remember the last time she and her family traveled this highway, but her recollection was interrupted by the pounding in her ears.

“What does it mean to be African American?”
“Why do you ask that question?”
“At school, Sister Gracilda had me fill out a form and she told me to put a check mark next to the word ‘African American.’ Am I African American? What is an African American?”
“It means persons with African blood. Or better put, someone with African genes. Sometimes they’re also called Black.”
“Am I Black?”