Cracks

The house began to go early in the summer. It started with a crack in the concrete front doorstep—not hairline, but thin enough that Rich squinted at it over the hem of his bag of groceries, wondering, hadn’t that always been there?

Of course there had been times last winter when he had begun to think that the cliff the house sat on would finally succumb to the gray Pacific storms, would be reclaimed by the sea; it hadn’t, and then he was reassured, certain it would last another few years—though other houses, at least three in Falcon Cove, had gone over the past several winters. He had helped those neighbors pack everything up and move to newer houses on the northeastern end; he had watched the final moment of each home.