“Seventy-two. Millicent and I counted 153 one night last week.” Sophie didn’t look up from the nest, but in a moment she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes.

On the horizon, lightning streaked across a cloud, and moments later we heard distant, muffled thunder. I looked at the dark water of the Gulf, at the turtle laying her eggs, at my daughter, her face filled with awe as she knelt in the sand, at all of us caught in a small pool of light on this beach on this primal night. It was something I’ll always remember.

“She’s through,” Sophie said. “A hundred twenty-one.”

“Let’s move back,” Tammy said.

The turtle heaved herself from the nest, turned, and clumsily began to push sand over the egg-filled hole with her front flippers, throwing more sand around after she had finished so the site would be concealed. Then she lumbered home to the Gulf.

“Will she be back next year?” Frances asked.

“She’ll be back,” Sophie answered.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The dark shape became one again with the water. Behind her, in the sand, she had left a wide rut that looked like a tractor had been driven across the beach.

“Amazing.” Haley voiced what all of us were thinking.

“We mark the nest now,” Jack explained. “It won’t keep the ghost crabs and raccoons out, but people have learned to respect the nests. Some of them the hard way. This is federal property and they’re breaking the Endangered Species Act if they bother them.” He took a wooden stake, pushed it deep into the sand, and then tamped it. On the side of the stake was the number sixteen. “This is the sixteenth nest we’ve marked,” he said. “I’m sure there are some we’ve missed, but sixteen is pretty good. They’ll be coming in here until August, even September sometimes, to lay their eggs, and by that time these eggs will be hatching. That’s when the volunteers really get busy. The adult turtles won’t go near a light and the hatchlings are just the opposite, heading straight for them, even headlights on the road.”

“I want to be here when this nest hatches,” Haley said.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Tammy said. “Jack’s seen the hatchlings, but Sophie and I haven’t.”

There was another distant roll of thunder; the clouds were building in the southwest.

“Looks like we might get that storm,” Jack said.

“Do you think more turtles will come in tonight?” Haley asked him.

“Maybe. I’ll stick around until midnight. Joe and Edna Tarrant are coming then. When there have been sightings, we try to keep several watchers posted down the beach.”

“I had no idea all this went on,” I admitted.

Sophie looked up from the notebook she had been writing in. “I want to stay, too.”

“Ask your mother.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Tammy said.