But Jo kept driving, past the condos, down a long flat road where luxury vacation homes stood out from the rows of sun-bleached bungalows like flamingos in a line of gulls. She parked at a quiet access near the island’s point, where beach grass waved and orange sea oats bloomed. We carried the cooler, the blankets, the baby tent, and a basket of sand toys along a splintery walkway over the dunes, trudging across the soft, shifting sand to an unspoiled stretch of beach.
“How about here?” Alec said.
Here was quiet. No one else was here except a few fishermen casting lines into the surf. A woman read in a chair, her feet in the water. A family on vacation crowded into the scant shade of an umbrella.
Something inside me relaxed. “Here is good.”
Alec set up the baby tent. I slathered Robbie in sunscreen while Jo set out our lunch. As supervised meals go, it was very nice. Alec ate three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I managed half, seasoned with sand and lotion, and thirty-four grapes and a bite of banana.
It was still an effort to eat.
After lunch, I took a walk, resisting the urge to repeat my morning’s three-mile run. Reminding myself to breathe, to be, to feel the sand between my toes. When I got back, I stripped off my sweatpants to sit with Jo and Robbie at the water’s edge, the baby in a diaper and a sunhat, Jo in a one-piece suit. Her hair was falling down and the suit was bunching up and she looked totally happy, comfortable in her shape. Her body. I felt a twinge of envy. Alec glided his skimboard along a long flat stretch of beach, picking it up, dripping, and throwing it down again.
Everything was bright and flat and clear, the shadows shortened bythe noonday sun. Alec’s body cut the air like a sail, the shallows curling in his wake. The waves rolled out and whispered in. Robbie kicked his pink toes in the water, sending droplets sparkling. My legs, sticking out beside Jo’s, looked very pale. My knees were big and knobby. Were my thighs fatter than two weeks ago?
“You’re getting better,” Jo said suddenly. “I know you are.”
I grasped a handful of wet sand, letting it trickle through my fingers. “I want to. Get better, I mean. I’m trying.”
She turned her head and looked at me. “What’s it like?”
I stared out at the curving blue horizon, avoiding her eyes. “I have this noise in my head all the time. Like another person living in my brain. Every day I lost a little of myself. I’m still not sure I’ll ever get it back. It’s like the tide, Jo, when it turns—it goes slowly, but it can’t be stopped.”
A sound escaped her. She pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes brimming. I put my arm around her.
She leaned her head against my shoulder. “Let’s build a sand castle.”
“What?”
“The way we used to. Remember?”
A smile started, deep inside. “I remember.”
We scooped and shoveled, finding a rhythm, digging a pool just beyond the reach of the water. We piled the sand high, dredging gloppy handfuls to create spires and towers. Robbie patted the sand with starfish hands and gouged it with his shovel. Occasionally the towers came down, slumping with their own weight or smashed by Robbie’s feet. It didn’t matter. We shored them up and built again. Alec saw what we were doing and came to help, abandoning his board and teenage dignity to deepen the moat, diverting the water.
A wave ran up the beach, churning the pool, leaving behind a line of treasures in the sand. Specks of shells. Ribbons of seaweed. A broken feather.
“Tide’s coming in,” he said.
Another surge, threatening the foundations. Our castle would never survive. But the cycle would go on between the sand and the restless sea, storm and tides constantly taking away and replenishing the beach.
The ocean makes everything better.
I picked up the feather and stuck it on top of the tallest spire.
When we trooped to the car at the end of the day, sticky and sandy and sunburnt, I looked back over my shoulder. Down by the line of water, the brave white feather still fluttered in the breeze.
A black limo was parked in the shadow of the barn. A man was sitting on the porch swing, like the star of a country music video. My heart bumped.
Jo peered through the windshield. “Is that...?”
“Colt.” I got out of the car. “Hi. What are you doing here?”
He sauntered down the front porch steps. “Waiting for you. For the last two hours.” He leaned forward. His warm mouth pressed mine. “Good thing you’re worth it.”
“You should have texted.”
“I wanted to surprise you.” He drew back, smiling. “You look great.”
