He was returning from his early morning beach walk rather disappointed. No sharks teeth again. He knew it sounded silly, sharks teeth being so important among all the shells, glimmering upon a palette only God could paint.

How many years had it been? Fifteen, twenty? She had seemed so fragile, so frail that day.
He remembered her smile as he placed the perfectly formed sharks tooth into her weathered palm.  It was to be the last time they walked in that placed together.

Somehow, he just needed that sign from her today, the one that said, “I’m still with you.”

As he sighed and started towards the cabin, he spotted an opened cockle shell. In his mind, it looked just like a heart. “You ARE here!” he exclaimed  as the wind gathered his words and scattered them into the waves.

He picked up the opened cockle shell carefully, hoping not to break the tenuous hinge that held it together. Overjoyed by the “sign”  of  the heart-shaped shell, he failed to notice what was hidden  underneath it-a perfect black sharks tooth.