Once these ablutions were performed—as plainly a ritual as is a Catholic Mass yet assuredly as private and guarded a tradition as she had—Charlotte smiled at me and abruptly turned to walk away. She wandered no more than 20 feet and leaned lightly against a cypress tree, signaling me to join. I did not so much walk up the beach as float toward an irresistible, yet inscrutable, life force in the late morning, dissipating mist with turquoise eyes shining brighter than the most precious stones.

I involuntarily, breathlessly proposed marriage.

She inhaled so sharply, I grew suddenly afraid to touch her—not that it was a liberty I had ever taken, except to lend her my arm—and somehow I grew panicked and even more afraid that she might sense my puerile hesitation, so without giving it a moment's thought I stated my case with frantic, ungainly urgency, swearing by books I had never read and wonders I had never seen that I would protect her as long as I drew breath.

Her smile—her wonderful, long straight teeth and the lower lip she so often bit in thought and returned to the view of the world bright red—her smile finally revealed itself as she laughed and asked, "Whatever from?"

I startled even more terribly than I had but a moment before—perhaps more helplessly than ever in my life—and gestured in spasms, wordlessly about my body, her body, and my passionately longed-for future in a way that caused her to giggle more, ever more gently, ever more eager to share her delight, whether in her suitor or simply in the ocean breeze.

"From California, you mean? From the beach?"

"N—no! I—I, Charlotte, we...I mean, rather, you..."

And in a single motion one might have called brazen were it not so simple, so without pretense, or so considerate and merciful from my perspective, Charlotte grabbed my forearm with her left hand and put her right upon my lips, whereupon she moved it so she could kiss me with such natural forthrightness that I had to steady myself on the very same tree trunk against which she leaned, forming some strange angle in the sand.

She drew her face away from mine, placed her fingers upon my clavicle, just above my heart, and swore upon her honor she would protect me from Ohio.

I laughed to the heavens and nearly died from joy! Oh, to have died right then, against that cypress, tumbling into her arms and into her hair—to have fallen there as one, unblemished and into eternity upon the sand...

She bit her lip as was her way and tightened the corners of her mouth so that her cheekbones were framed just so in the late morning light below her red-blonde hair and coruscating eyes and said, "Promise me I'll see the ocean at least once a month for as long as we are married. I know you shall do all a man can to protect me from that which I might be protected, but you must promise me I'll see the ocean for the rest of my life."