Noon, and the sun’s gone fierce, burned away the last of the haze. Elfriede, in her bathing costume of dark blue serge, feels as if she’s boiling alive. Because there’s no one else about on this stretch of wild beach, she removes her stockings and shoves them in the basket. The children are naturally unaffected. Elfriede climbs to her feet and lifts Gertrud into her arms. Johann has just disappeared into the guts of a cresting wave. Ursula’s chasing a screaming Frederica into the water’s edge. Elfriede squints and reassures herself that their hats are still in place, shielding their precious faces from the sun. She carries Gertrud toward the water. She can swim a little, but swimming’s impossible when you’re carrying a baby on your hip, so she just wades into the mad, bubbling wash of surf, enjoying the pull of the undertow on her bathing dress, the sting of salt against her calves, the relief. She swings Gertrud downward and the baby kicks her legs in the water and laughs, and all the while Elfriede keeps her left eye on Johann, emerging now on the other side of the wave, tossing his white hair gleefully, and her right eye on the girls as they race along the water’s edge. You never stop. Always, always, some part of your brain maintains this awareness of each child. Like the hum of a bumblebee, exhausting and unceasing and necessary to life. At night, when she tumbles unconscious into bed, she’ll sleep right through the bang of a Florida thunderstorm outside her window, but a single cough from the other end of the corridor jolts her wide awake. In other words, motherhood.

Elfriede glances toward the sky. The white sun sits high. Time to open the picnic basket? Johann dives again. Gertrud swings her legs so hard, the foam flies up and hits her on the cheek. The girls swerve from the water to make an arc upon the empty sand, a hundred yards away. Wait! Not empty after all.

Elfriede straightens. Returns Gertrud to her hip. Gazes at the girls as they swoop around in circles, sand flying, seaweed kicking, but really she’s looking past them at the white figure sitting right at the edge of the dune grass, a quarter mile away.

It might be a dog, she thinks. It’s just sitting there, a white speck.

No, it’s not a dog. Of course not. Recognizing her observation, it rises to its feet, a man fully grown, dressed in a pale suit, and waves one arm. Starts forward at a long-legged stroll.