One Night Gone

I have always been fascinated by beach towns in the off-season.

- Tara Laskowski

One Thanksgiving several years ago, my husband, our son, and I spent Thanksgiving weekend with my in-laws in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. The weather was glorious that year, especially for a Pennsylvania gal like me who’s used to several feet of snow on the ground in November. How wonderful to slip off your shoes and run in the sand, to shed the bulky coat and bask in the sunshine, sleeveless!

But beyond the momentary escape from shivers and ice, I loved how quiet everything seemed. The stores and restaurants, if open at all, were less packed, less hectic. The people seemed kinder, slower, more relaxed. The beach felt like it was all ours, and ours only. We didn’t have to share it with anyone.

But within all this beachy quietness was also a sense that something felt off. That in the nothing happening, anything at all could happen.