The silver band is stuck between two slabs of rock, sparkling like a tiny piece of sun that's fallen into the sea. I'm kicking bubbles, slithering through seaweed archways and breaking orderly streams of striped fish. I swim closer, closer until it's unmistakable.

My hand crashes through the water, reaching for my mother's ring.

"Melissa! Melissa!"

My fingers curl, but the polished metal slips away with another scream. I open my eyes, gripping my brother's pajama sleeve, wheezing and hauling in oxygen that's no longer on short supply. The saltwater on my tastebuds isn't ocean after all.

"Were you having the dream again?" Dylan hesitates, then flicks on the lamp.

I nod and sit up slowly, pushing sticky hair off my face. "I almost got it this time."

He climbs into bed with me, worry creasing his brows. Dad says seven is too young to find out about Mom, but Dylan is clever. He just hasn't connected the dots between the empty seat at the dining table and my nightmares yet.

Dylan sighs. "It'd be way easier if it was bigger."

"What do you mean?"

"Why do you always look for a ring? Why can't it be a... truck?"

I smile shakily. "Rings are special."

His gaze strays and clouds with contemplation. "Then why's it always the ocean? Why can't it be somewhere without sharks?" he asks, even though neither of us have ever seen sharks in the Pacific Northwest, even though my mouth falls open and it feels dangerously damp underneath my eyes again.

"Because—" It took three days to pull her out of the water. They never recovered the ring. "Because a lot of lost things end up in the ocean."

"Like garbage."

I bite my lip. "No, like starfish and crabs."

"When Mrs. Velez took us to the beach, me and Henry found crabs in a smashed bottle. We took them out, then Mrs. Velez made us stand back from the ocean, because stuff was floating out and getting stuck. Huge garbage bags, lunch boxes..."

"The ocean isn't like that when I dream."

Dylan shrugs, oblivious to the ache flooding my chest like an oil spill.

When I was his age, Mom took me to the beach, too. We picked seashells off the shore, danced as daylight glinted off pale water. I grinned, threw my juice carton onto the sand. Mom slid it into her purse. I didn't see any other mothers doing the same.

"Melissa?" Dylan giggles. "What if you found a garbage truck in the ocean?"

I tuck him under my arm. He laughs and I savour it, because someday he'll regard the beach as equal parts disgusting, polluted and devastating. Even after he moves forward from Mom, he'll never see water as clear as my dreams. He won't remember the ocean being lustrous and vast—only tragic and all-consuming.

"I'd drive it like a submarine," I say. "I'd clean the ocean just for you."