“What is it, Alex?” Edith asked.
“It’s a calculator.”
Alex cradled it like a baby bird, gently blowing the sand from it.
“What do you do with it?”
“Nothing now, but before the war people used it for all kinds of thing, like counting money”
“Oh yeah…money.”
Edith remembered the stories. You needed money to buy things, but she never quite understood. Weren’t things just there for the taking?

Alex turned it over and over in his hands. There were tears in his eyes. Finally, he took a step back and pitched it into the sea.