However long it takes.

She rolled down her window, ushering in the chilly January air and dragging it into her lungs. She exhaled as much stress and worry as she could, wanting for just one night to forget everything—Trudy’s bruises, Jay’s anger, the sisters’ fractured childhood, Violet’s own aching loneliness.

The loneliness had wrapped around her like an intruding weed long ago, taking root and squeezing tight. She didn’t envy Trudy her life with Jay, but she wished for something different. Something better. A place to land at the end of the day, a safekeeping hand and heart. Someone who wouldn’t leave.

Inside the Sandbar she sat on a stool and flagged the bartender. All around her bodies swayed to the music and faces gleamed with buzzy happiness and the pulsing hope that they might not go home alone.

This sure isn’t the place to find something better.

The bartender stuck a lime on the lip of her plastic cup. It wasn’t long before a tall man, sweaty and overconfident, leaned in next to her, plying her with sweet talk about music and dance moves. He was pathetic, really, and she was just about to tell him so, when the air in the room changed. Prickles of heat ran up her arms and down her back, and she braced her hand on the bar as if the room were quaking. She peered over her shoulder just as another man approached the empty stool on her other side.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

And just like that, the cloak of loneliness tumbled off her shoulders.

* * *

Violet’s morning bird survey began like all the others. The sand under her feet was cool and firm, and water tumbled over her toes like loose diamonds. Every surface, liquid or solid, was shining in the brilliant sun that coated the wide blue Gulf of Mexico. Usually on a day like this, the horizon would be dotted with sailboats and fishing boats out for a day’s work or adventure, but a stiff breeze had kept most of them in. It was an uncharacteristic wind, stronger than normal for such a bright, clear day. But it did tamp down the heat, which Violet appreciated.

She was only a few minutes into her survey and the top sheet on her clipboard was already covered with data. In her experience, birding was often best on cloudy or even drizzly days, but it seemed despite the wind, the birds were taking advantage of the morning’s clear brilliance.

Off to her right, among the grassy dunes, other volunteers had posted a temporary fence around an area where least terns had built their nests. These birds were annual visitors to the Alabama shore, and all the birders in the area knew to pay close attention to the activity there. Violet crossed the sugary-white sand toward the wind-billowed orange fence to get a better look. As she watched, two females flew low over the dunes and landed next to a third, which was already incubating a nest on the sand. The two newcomers ruffled their feathers and chattered, their noise a chaotic jumble of squeaks. The mother on the nest gazed at them, then glanced away, all but rolling her eyes. Violet imagined the two intruders as more experienced nest sitters giving heaps of unwanted advice to the new mother.