The ocean stretches out in front of them, endless and roiling, as though there is nothing but water forever in all directions. The sunset turns the sky and the water pink, and then orange and a brilliant, hazy red before the sun slips away. Everyone watches until all they can see are flashes of moon reflected in the peaks of waves.

—

In the morning, Carlo teaches the girls to wade when the tide is still low and the waves small. Their mammas pick their way down from the sheltered porch and shade their eyes with their hands to watch. “Be careful,” Carlo says, “if you see foam on top of a wave. That means it’s going to crash.” Sofia runs in after him and is soon soaked. Antonia stands in water up to her ankles and lets the tide tug her, toward shore and then away. She feels very small, and tired, as though the whole world is rocking her to sleep. Her feet are buried in sand underwater.

She does not see Sofia waving to her. “Look how far I am, Tonia! Look!” Sofia faces her friend, backlit by morning sun. “Look how deep it’s getting!” Neither Antonia nor Sofia notices the wave until it breaks: right at the small of Sofia’s back, just surprising enough and strong enough to sweep her under the water.

Antonia shrieks, and yanks her feet out of the sand, and feels the ocean and the earth try to suck her in as she runs toward the spot where Sofia was pulled under. But just as suddenly, Sofia is up again, wiping her eyes and coughing, spitting out brine. Carlo has wrapped his big fingers around Sofia’s shoulder, and Antonia is left with a pounding heart and unused adrenaline. She is surprised and comforted to realize that she would have gone in. She would have gone all the way in, if she needed to. She looks back at the mammas, standing on the shore. They are faraway shadows, but Antonia knows they would have gone in too.

Carlo pulls Sofia up by the arms and her legs wrap around his waist. He cups her face in his hands and says something Antonia cannot hear.

When all three of them are onshore again, he says, “Never turn your back on the ocean, girls. She’s tricky, and she’ll sneak up on you the moment you stop paying attention.” His face is creased with worry and Antonia is seized by an urge to say, it’s okay, Papa, but she doesn’t.

Sofia, for her part, can’t stop reliving the instant she was somersaulted under the waves. The ocean had been so much bigger and more powerful than she could have imagined. The water had rushed past her face and into her nose and eyes as though it already knew her. And how odd, to be suspended and turned that way. To have up and down made so thoroughly irrelevant.