I sat on the sand. “So,” I said, leaning back and soaking in the warmth from the earth. “Remember when Cotton gave that lecture?” I pointed to Uncle Cotton walking with Birdie and Babs.

“We heard only the end.”

“He talked about not really knowing the ending.”

“I think there’s more to it than what we heard. It was called ‘Life as a Story’—I’m sure we only caught the question session.”

“You think life is a story in a way?”

“Yes, I do. Don’t you?” he asked.

“Sometimes … yes. I mean, if I saw my life as my own story. Really, if I saw my life as my story and not a player in someone else’s story, if I wasn’t just ‘the wife’ in the story. Or just ‘the mother’ in the story. Or just ‘the daughter’ in the story …”

“How can you not be, though? You are also all those things. I think we can be both. Living our story and in someone else’s story.”

“And you really can’t make someone else live yours.”

“You can try. If you really want to spend your entire life controlling others, I guess you can try.”

Life slowed and I understood, in the certain way the tide knew when to ebb, that it was time for me to go home and write my own next chapter. Or at least the next page.

“I think,” I mumbled, quiet and with my eyes closed, “all you can do is write the next page.”

“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes that is all you can do. Or just the next sentence, even.” He brushed my hair off my forehead. “Do you think the Summer House is changing your story?”

“Yes.” I drew a circle in the sand, twirling my finger in a spiral toward its center. “Maybe the rumors are true.”

Babs, Uncle Cotton, and Birdie were so far down the beach that they appeared as children against the coastal backdrop. Hutch stared at me and then stood, reaching his hand to pull me up.

“Sit down,” I said. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t do this. I can’t get lost again.”

“What do you mean?”

“You always did that. Said ‘What do you mean?’ when you didn’t want to respond.” His voice was changing, but I couldn’t yet say how.

“Because I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what you … really mean.” I sat up, brushing the hair out of my face, the dizziness out of my head.

“I mean this—us—is too easy. I could get lost in us in a bad way. And I want to, but I won’t.”

“Oh. That’s not what I was … trying to do. That’s not what—”