“Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine.” He waited through a heavy pause. “I’m just busy at the shop. The festival is coming up, you know, and there’s a lot . . .” She trailed off.

“Violet?”

“Do you remember how to log in your data back at the office?”

She’d taken him to the Audubon office the other day to show him how to enter his findings into the data system. It was an easy enough process, one he could have figured out on his own, but he let her walk him through the whole thing, asking a question here and there, until she was comfortable with his proficiency.

“I remember.”

“Good. Then I’ll just plan to see you next week.”

“Violet, are you . . . ?” The sure scrambled away before he could say it. Violet was a strong woman, always had been, and the years hadn’t worn away the armor she wore to show everyone she could handle everything. He didn’t want to sound like he didn’t believe her . . . but he didn’t believe her. “If I can do anything, you’ll let me know?”

“Of course. Thanks.”

So Frank walked the morning survey on his own. He made sure to do everything exactly as Violet did it—slipped his shoes off on the wooden walkway, paused at the lounge chair to pull out his clipboard and flip to a fresh page, made the initial notes about cloud cover, precipitation, beach conditions, and wind speed. Then he started walking.

The birds were out en masse this morning, despite a large group of early sunbathers setting up umbrellas and towels and tossing beach balls on the sand. A large gray heron stood among the dunes to his right, its thin neck a dark line against the waving, wheat-colored sea oats. Twelve tiny sandpipers dotted the shore, their thin beaks quickly darting into the wet sand to grab the clams that scurried under the surface after each wave receded. Three gulls, two males and a female, ran just ahead of him, daring him to get any closer to them. When he did, they cackled and took flight.

He and Violet always turned around at the chair-rental stand, but today he went a little farther. His leg felt strong and he wasn’t ready to return to his quiet, empty house just yet. He was having dinner tonight with his son, but he had a lot of solitary hours to get through before meeting him at seven o’clock. He laughed to himself when he realized he considered the birds decent company. Violet had said the same thing just a few days ago.

When his data sheet was almost full, he turned around and headed back. Passing the rental stand again, he thought of that sliver of space where he’d once tucked the bird-shaped shell. The space was empty, of course. He’d come back to that spot soon after . . . well, after everything happened . . . and reclaimed the little shell. It had accompanied him to Pensacola when he moved, and he’d even kept it through the years he was married to Alice. He never looked at it, but he knew it was there, buried in the bottom of a shoebox full of random things he’d emptied from an old desk drawer. He’d brought the box back to Sugar Bend with him when he relocated, and it sat in his closet now, quiet as a promise.