Vera Chapter I

In which Lucy, newly bereaved and strangely detached from her own sorrow, stands silent and unmoved beside the sea on a radiant, burning August day, feeling the shocking void left by her father's sudden death. Into this still and heavy summer air comes a troubled stranger, Wemyss, whose own grief and desperate need for companionship draw him impulsively into her presence, inviting a delicate and unspoken understanding between two lonely souls.