The dunes along this part of the beach are so high that the water is not visible. One of them is nicknamed The Matterhorn; fortunately, that wasn’t the one we had to climb, but we were out of breath when we reached the top and saw the Gulf.

Tammy paused and looked around. “There,” she whispered. About forty feet to our right and lower down the dune, we could see two figures crouching low. We made our way toward them.

“Anything?” Tammy whispered as we sat down beside Jack and Sophie.

“She’s trying to make up her mind,” Jack whispered back. “She’s been out of the water twice and gone back. Skittish.”

We settled into the sand to wait. Fred’s hand still held mine, and in a few moments, I was aware of a pulse beating between us. Was it my heart? His? I had cried on the phone, and he had come to rescue me. Wasn’t that what I had wanted?

I think during part of the wait that I was half asleep, drifting somewhere between the slightly hazy stars, the distant lightning, and the water that rippled phosphorescent, white on white sand. At one point, a meteor burst across the sky, green, glowing. Fred’s hand squeezed mine.

And then someone (Sophie?) touched my shoulder and I was no longer drifting but watching a huge black form materialize from the water. It came slowly, dragging itself across the sand, a creature of the sea ponderous in an alien world.

We were afraid to breathe. In the distance we could hear music and the hum of an airplane. Would the noise frighten her off? She stopped, and against the white sand, we could see her huge head darting this way and that. Was all safe?

She lumbered forward again, dragging herself onto the dry, upper beach, through the first vegetation. Then she stopped. In a moment we heard the rhythmic scoop of sand.

“We can go see her now,” Jack Berliner murmured. “She’s nesting.”

“Wait a minute,” Tammy said. “Let her get the nest dug.”

So we waited for the sound of digging to stop, and then we followed Jack to the spot where the turtle had disappeared.

“Any of you ever seen a turtle lay eggs?” he asked.

We all shook our heads no, with the exception of Tammy and Sophie.

“Well, they cry.”

I remembered that Sophie had told us that.

“I just thought I’d better warn you. They aren’t real tears, of course; they wash sand from her eyes and get the salt out of her system.”

“So they say,” Tammy said.

Sophie was the first to shine a light on the turtle. “Oh, look, Daddy. She’s a big one!”