We step onto the beach. The sand is hard from the recent rain. Irene takes off her shoes and motions to us to do the same. Together we step into the churning water, up to our ankles. Doris takes my other hand and squeezes it hard. From the corner of my gaze, I spy Leo, who stands with Sophie next to the pile of shoes and socks, about fifteen yards away, as if to protect our belongings. From what, I can’t imagine. Irene opens the box, which is made of wood, about six inches square, and mouths a few words I can’t hear. The kids and I hold tight to each other’s hands. Irene throws out her arm in a wide arc, and the dust makes a glittering smear in the air, hangs there like a rainbow, before it showers into the surf.

“Good-bye, Sandy!” Wesley calls out, in a boy’s soprano, packed with excitement.

After a moment, Irene turns and tells Wesley and Doris to go looking for seashells with Leo and Mrs. Rofrano, because she needs to speak to me. The kids scamper off and Irene sits next to me on the wet sand, Indian style as before, one hand on each knee. A long raincoat covers her usual shirt and trousers, and her back is straight, like a ballet dancer’s.

“There’s something I want you to know,” she says. “I want you to know that he was happy here, as happy as he could be. He did not come here to die. He wanted to live.”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t surf in that, if I wanted to live.”

“But you have to understand that he thrived on that thrill. He needed it. I think it was the war, the things he saw there, the way just about everybody died around him. So he needed to test this thing that had protected him, whatever you want to call it, luck or fate or Providence, to make sure it still existed. Then he could go to sleep at night and feel he would wake up alive.” She pauses. “That’s what I think, anyway. He never liked to talk about it.”

I settle back on my hands and stare at the ocean. “What about you? Were you happy?”