We took the barge down to the Southern Isles, where we spent four days on the beaches. We couldn’t afford to go farther than the northernmost island of Hathern, with its black sand and the melancholy ruins of the long-dead Saphant Empire, but we still had a good time.

Mom refused to go in the water, so she had to put up with Dad splashing water at her. Dad loved to swim—although “bob” or “float” might more accurately describe what he looked like when he took to the waves. Mom loved to watch the sunrises and sunsets from our little rented bungalow. During the day, she would walk along the beach for hours, and always brought back shells and shiny rocks for us. Sometimes Duncan and I went with her, sometimes we stayed with Dad.

At dusk, we sat on a blanket together and Dad would make a fire, cooking fish over the flames. I can’t remember if he bought the fish or caught them. I don’t remember him being much of a fisherman.

Then Dad would lecture us in a teasing way about the mighty Saphant Empire.

Pointing to the black-gray nubs and jagged walls drowning in the sand and sea, suffused with the orange of sunset, he would say, “Those are the result of war. A naval conflict and then the survivors fought on this very beach. There used to be a city here. Now, just what you see. And then … and then!” And then he would find a way to bring pirates and adventures into his history lesson.

I didn’t give his words about war much thought at the time. The ruins were just great rocks to climb on, tidal pools to explore. That men had fought and died there hundreds of years ago seemed too remote from our vacation to be real.

Another time, Dad presented me with a tiny hermit crab in a white coiled shell.

“Don’t hurt it,” he said, “and leave it on the beach when we go.”

“I will,” I said, marveling at the feel of its tiny legs against the skin of my palm.

The sand crunching between my toes; the heat and breeze off the sea, the lights of boats far offshore.

Mom looked after Duncan for most of the trip, because he was young and needed constant attention. (I remember only the vaguest flash of sunlight, the most tenuous thread of a memory of water—it was all too idyllic for me to retain, I suppose.)