The Texture of Glass

She wanted and needed... The phrase struck her and Isabel repeated it within the melody she’d been humming. Wanted and needed and no one could tell her/ she loved him and... she loved and adored him and no one could tell her/ he wouldn’t stay long/ he wouldn’t be ’round/ when she wanted and needed his strength and his ... needed his need of her...

His need of her. Wanted his need of her. He had needed her.

Until he didn’t.

Isabel stopped wandering through the damp sand and stared out at the restless waves, the constantly moving and mixing and churning water that drew her to Lake Erie so often. She didn’t come for the glass, not really. She came for the lake. The crying seagulls.

She wanted his need of her.

Isabel frowned at the thought. He had needed her. He had. Deeply. Like no one else in the world. Is that all it was? Not love, but the feeling of being so desperately needed? She’d spent much of her childhood alone while her father worked more than full time and her mother took care of the house in between her realtor work and playing at being an interior decorater. She’d done some training for it and often sat at the table designing rooms that would never come off the page. Her outlet, she called it. Someday she’d do more with it, so she said. That day had yet to come. Isabel was her only child because Jocelyn Dillon-Sanderson wanted no more than one. She spent what little social energy she had showing houses to people who wanted everything for nothing  because they had nothing due to dreaming more than doing, or who had everything and still wanted more. Her mother clearly believed those were the only two kinds of people in the world.

The truth was: her mother didn’t like people much. Isabel’s grandpa once said it had to have come from her biological father, since it wasn’t from him or from her mom, both big believers there was good in everyone. Isabel was somewhere between the two. She was always optimistically cautious with new people, but fairly avoidant overall. Meaning she was basically a loner and yet craved companionship and adventure.