Jason reached for his menu, then stopped.
On the wall behind Hannah hung a large painting. It was an oil on canvas, the colors muted with age. It showed a rough stretch of shoreline beneath a gray sky. Waves rolled in against dark rocks, and just above them stood a weather-beaten house, its wooden siding faded by salt and wind. A narrow path led down toward the water.
Something in Jason’s chest tightened.
“You ever notice how restaurants always put weird art on the walls?” he said, though his voice had gone quiet.
Hannah glanced over her shoulder. “That one’s kind of pretty, actually.”
Jason kept staring at it.
“I don’t know why,” he said slowly, “but it reminds me of something.”
“Like what?”
He hesitated, embarrassed. It sounded ridiculous even to him.
“There was a woman,” he said finally. “Standing near the water. Wearing this long blue dress. The kind that moves in the wind.” He gestured vaguely, as if the image might appear between them. “It was… old-fashioned. Not modern.”
Hannah’s head tilted.
“She had a ribbon in her hair,” she said.
Jason blinked.
“What?”
“A ribbon,” Hannah repeated, her brow knitting as if she were trying to see it more clearly. “Blue too. It kept coming loose.”
Jason stared at her.
“How do you know that?”
Hannah froze for half a second, then laughed.
“I don’t,” she said. “I just… had a dream about something like that once.”
Jason didn’t smile.
“A dream,” he repeated.
“Yeah.” She shrugged, reaching for her water glass. “You know how dreams are. Random stuff your brain throws together.”
But Jason was still watching her, the painting forgotten for the moment.
“That’s strange,” he said slowly.
“Why?”
“Because in your dream…” he said, leaning forward slightly, “was there an old house?”
Hannah’s fingers stopped halfway to the glass.
“An old house,” Jason continued, his voice quieter now, the image forming as he spoke. “Right on the edge of the beach. Wood siding all gray from the salt. And the wind always sounds like it’s moving through the boards.”
Hannah looked up at him.
Jason nodded toward the painting behind her.
“Like that one.”
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