This is the photo George shows the woman: Delia sitting on the edge of a cliff, her feet extended down the rockface, her arms in the air, dappled sunlight crawling up her green swimsuit and through the wild auburn strands of her hair. This is the only photo he shows for the simple reason that it is the best. For the simple reason that he loves it. 

The woman asks if she can touch it. Takes it between her pointer and thumb. 

“Those rocks she’s sittin’ on are sandstone.” George remembers that the woman is American, and although his English is good, his Irish accent is thick. He speaks slower. “Ye find not much else at the Cliffs.”

The woman nods, but she wants to know more about Delia. George tells her that it took millions of years for the Cliffs of Moher to form, and isn’t that miraculous? Miraculous is a word Delia would have used. He doesn’t tell the woman that Delia cursed like a sailor and had blue eyes that made the ocean jealous. 
 

He doesn’t tell the woman about that day in the photo, how that was the first time she’d taken him to the cliffs. How he’d lived in Liscannor all his life and never bothered to go. How they’d taken the ancient stone steps to the beach below, a glass bottle swinging between Delia’s fingers and the wind whipping up the path behind them. Delia’s border collie, Wilkie, followed with a wagging tail, barking at the puffins dipping into the ocean and blinking from the salt spray in his eyes. 
 

“This is my favorite part, George,” Delia called wearing that green bathing suit and a wrap-around skirt. Already squishing her toes into the sand at the base of the cliffs. George remembers the way she turned her face toward those cliffs where, for millions of years, monstrous waves eroded rocks—solid rocks. And Delia, God have mercy on Delia, she stared down the mighty cliffs and laughed. 
He was terrified of her; he was going to marry her. 
 

She took the bottle, a sea-glass purple one with a strangled neck, and checked that the cork was on tightly. For an extra measure, she pulled a roll of duct tape out of her satchel and tore a long strip off with her teeth. She wrapped it around the cork and bottle and then called to George again. 
 

“Wilkie doesn’t want us to send it back.” George pointed to the dog racing alongside the crashing waves. George liked Wilkie, but he always preferred the idle quietness of cats and the way they didn’t like anyone at first. The way they never said “thank you” or “I love you” but you knew they meant it.

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“Aye,” Delia sang. “But Wilkie knows that it doesn’t belong to us.” She pointed to the two messages curled tightly into the bottle—one from a stranger long ago and one scribbled with Delia’s address and telephone number from five minutes before they descended the cliffs. “We made it exist, George ‘n that’s miraculous.”

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Then, just like all the other beach bottles George would see her collect in the coming years, she threw it back to the violent waves, never to resurface.

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Or so George thought. 

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The woman in his cottage is short and frumpy. Her trousers are faded and her hair is tied up high to keep the sweat off her neck, but she has a kind face, and this is what George looks at as he takes the purple bottle from her. There are two messages inside, but the duct tape has been unwrapped and discarded and the cork is in the woman’s other hand. 

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George takes the bottle. The woman asks how much he loved Delia. She asks how Delia died. George explains the chemical processes behind the creation of sea glass. The woman’s family is visiting Dublin, then on to London. The kids want to ride the Eye and she can only stay with George for an hour. They have tea on the cottage verandah and then she leaves. And then George leaves. 

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George stands on the cliffs, watching the way the tides kick up debris that crashes into the line of distant cliffs, breaking against the layers of sediment. He counts the strata he can see. He names each one. He imagines that he is the last layer weighed down by all the rest and strangled by the rising waters. But this is not a thought he entertains for long, for the simple reason that he has a job to do. For the simple reason that he must do it. 

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He begins the long trek to the water below, bottle in hand. He doesn’t consider the strata again. Instead, he sees Wilkie running back and forth along the waves, barking at the puffins. Instead, he sees Delia in a green swimsuit, arms outstretched toward the sun. Instead, he stops at the water, takes off his shoes, and lets the violent, monstrous waves cover his toes. 

The waves are light, thin, cold, but not unpleasant. Not violent. Not monstrous.

 

George heaves the bottle back to sea. The waves bark. The cliffs laugh. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Delia sings. 

 

He is twenty-something again. Delia is in a green bathing suit after having thrown this bottle into the sea. She is light like the ocean, and he lets that lightness carry him up the old stone steps and back home, to the only photo he shows. For the simple reason that it is the best. For the simple reason that he loves it.