Edna and Jake had been married fifteen years at that point. They’d not been blessed with children, but they had each other, and the resort had become their baby of sorts. Still, she felt the pang of envy as she always did when she saw a woman with child. At this point, she’d delivered a half dozen babies to women who couldn’t care for them, but there’d always been a family ready to take the infant. Besides, the way she saw it, she’d turned her back on the two babies God had given her, so she didn’t feel she had the right to another.

Ann’s delivery was easy. For such a thin, delicate woman, she pushed that squalling little girl into the world as if it were nothing. All Edna had to do was catch the baby and wrap her in a pink blanket.

God, but she loved that little baby girl. All the wounds to her heart healed, and for the first time she felt whole. Jake was crazy about the baby. They cooed and fussed, marveled at her dark, curly hair, and laughed at how she fisted her hands when she took the bottle.

Beth Ann wouldn’t hold the baby or even look at her, and when she’d told Edna she was returning to Elizabeth City without the child, Edna didn’t try to stop her. To this day she wondered if Ann’s life might have been different if she’d encouraged her to raise her baby out here at the end of the earth.

But she’d let Ann go, named that squawking, high-spirited infant Ruth after Jake’s mother, and never looked back.

Now as she sat on the deck of her house sipping a whiskey, she watched Peter Manchester stagger toward the beach. A lifetime of maternal worries and regrets roiled inside her as she thought about Beth Ann, who had taken to her room today. After the words the couple had had the other night, it didn’t take much to know Beth Ann was hiding bruises.

When Edna stood and followed Peter Manchester, she didn’t have a plan. Maybe they would talk. Maybe she’d beg him for his silence. Maybe she’d threaten him with the sheriff.

Peter staggered toward the surf and fell to his knees. A wave rushed over the moist sand and struck him broadside. He toppled over but pushed himself up to a kneeling position. His white shirt clung to his bare chest, and his combed hair now twisted around his head.

“Damn it,” he shouted.

Edna slipped off her shoes and set them in the sand. She was wearing her favorite blue dress, and the idea of salt water drenching it didn’t sit well. But one did what one must.