Alma didn’t get up when she saw them coming, only leaned back on her elbows and bent a knee, as if to relax—or to pose, Henry thought. She wore her white bathing suit and sunglasses. The waves crashed and spread acres of foam, and the leading edge of it came within inches of her feet. Her hair hung wet about her shoulders.

“You didn’t go in there, did you?” Max asked when they’d reached her.

“Of course I did,” she said.

“You must be freezing, darling,” Clara said.

“Is that my dress?” Alma said.

Effie crossed her arms over it as if to shield it from view. “I’m sorry.”

“Their clothes were still wet,” Max said.

“I don’t mind,” Alma said. “It looks good on you.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Effie said.

Max went a few yards back from the tideline, to spread his towel where the sand was drier, and Effie and Clara followed him. Henry lingered near Alma, watching the waves.

“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” she said.

Henry whistled and nodded. “It is that.”

“It’s like the waves back home.”

He had the feeling that they were in league with each other now, that they shared the same language. From the start he’d thought she was untouchable, but now he knew better. It made the world seem more accessible to him. “Before this trip,” he said, “I’d never seen the ocean before.”

“You’re joking,” she said. She pulled her sunglasses down and looked at him over the frames. “Never in your life?”

“Never.” His eyes drifted for a moment over her body, to where the fabric of her bathing suit was crimped at her groin.

“Have you been in yet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It’s been too cold.”

She sat up, dusted off her hands, and got to her feet.

“You want to go in now?” he asked, alarmed.

She laughed. “We’ll just get our feet wet,” she said. Wet sand stuck to her bottom and to the backs of her thighs, and she batted it off and reached a finger into the elastic of her bathing suit to pull the wedge out. “Come on,” she said, and with the same hand took hold of his forearm and walked him toward the waves. Max hollered something behind them, but Henry couldn’t make it out over the roar. The touch of Alma’s hand thrilled him. She led him just a few yards before she stopped, and the sea was still a ways off. But then another wave crested, curled over, and crashed, and though it had seemed safely distant it was suddenly upon them, a rush of startling cold water that swept over their feet and ankles and halfway up their shins. Henry hopped back, but Alma clutched his arm again and held fast. “Stand still,” she said. “For the next one, stand still. Let it bury you in the sand.”