“Thanks to Ashley, I’m rethinking.” She told him about Rosa and the photographer and he listened carefully, the way Nate had always listened, as if every word she spoke was important. And when she finished he smiled.

“I heard about that. The guy was last seen heading south.”

“You know?”

“This is Silver Point. Rosa put out the word so that people were aware. She said he was asking intrusive questions.”

“He was,” Joanna said. “It’s his right, I suppose.”

“Just as it’s our right to refuse to answer them. We used to swim here. Do you remember?”

“Yes.” She remembered all of it, including what had happened afterward.

His mouth. His hands. His body.

“Can I tempt you?”

“Excuse me?” Just four words—can I tempt you—and now her body felt hot and she couldn’t breathe properly.

“Into the water for a swim.”

Strip to her swimsuit, leave her dress on the sand and dip in the sea with him? Watch him strip off his shirt right next to her?

Something they’d done all the time growing up now took on new meaning.

“I don’t think so.”

It was obvious from the look he gave her that he knew exactly why she was refusing and the memories hovered right there between them, almost visible to the naked eye.

He smiled. “Let’s walk, then.”

They walked along the shoreline in the direction of Otter’s Nest.

It was the first time she’d done this. “It feels strange. Being back. It feels like home, and yet not like home.”

“I don’t know how you stayed away for twenty years. You weren’t tempted to come back sooner?”

“It was complicated.” In some ways staying away had been easier than coming back. She paused and picked up a shell. “How about you? You stayed in Silver Point?”

“I went to college. Then I came back.”

What had happened to his plans to travel and see the world? All those things he’d said he needed to do. She could have been hurt, but she wasn’t.

Feelings were feelings. You either felt them or you didn’t. She understood that now. Reasoning, excuses, desire—none of that was relevant.

“I thought you’d be married with kids.” They’d talked about it once, when they were both too young to appreciate how complicated life could be.

“No kids. Married once—” he volunteered that freely “—took us four years to admit we’d both made a mistake.”

She should have done the same, she knew that now. She should have admitted her mistake much earlier, instead of always trying to make excuses, make the best of things. She should have said, I deserve more than this, and set about getting it. But sometimes it was easier to accept what you had than take the steps needed to change things.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. That’s tough.”