Restoration [Shawn Mendes] AU

Prologue

She stood at the edge of the sea, staring out at the horizon. Her graceful figure standing straight and taut, as the setting October sun shone down on her honey brown hair which fluttered behind her in the autumn breeze. Her misty blue eyes stared out, straining to see something beyond the bend of the horizon, beyond the sky, too far for her to reach.

The look on her face was one of bewilderment rather than loss, but loss was there too...a puzzled disbelief that what she searched for was unreachable, was gone and never coming back.

Never coming back.

If I wait long enough, she told herself, he might come back. They both might come back. I think they're out there, just around the bend beyond the horizon, in the sailboat or maybe looking for crabs like they used to. They'll come back hand in hand - tall Robert, handsome as ever with his dark brown hair and laughing green eyes, along with little Beau, his sun-kissed curls blowing in the breeze, trying to keep up on his little 4-year-old legs, smiling up at his dad that he adores...and everything will be alright.

As she stood even straighter and gazed out at the cold gray sea, trying to pierce the veils of distance and time and tried to see what could not be seen, curls of white foam were breaking around her feet and spray rose up in plumes, encompassing her lonely figure. She looked drenched and cold, yet somehow she couldn't help thinking about that warm summer day in late July. It was a constant aching thought that bombarded her at regular intervals every single day since then.

She recalled how warm and sunny the weather started out that day in late July when Robert and Beau took off in the Catalina Sport sailboat for a little while, with the promise they would return before dinner. It was one of Beau's favorite activities with his father and Robert was happy to oblige his young son, to spend some quality father-son time while vacationing at the Devereaux family beach house in Chatham on Cape Cod. It had been a perfect summer day, until it wasn't and no one could have predicted how profoundly her life would change by nightfall.