The sun glistened on its glossy feathers, and Anette resisted an impulse to run her finger over the beautiful animal. It was just a dead bird after all, not so different from the chicken Svend had made for dinner the night before.

She called on her dogs, and they followed her obediently back to the car, antsy at having to leave the bird behind but too well trained to defy her. In the parking lot she cleaned off their paws and they gracefully leaped into the back of the car, already seeming to have forgotten their find. But as soon as Anette turned on the engine, they started whining and whimpering and kept it up all the way home, as if they had left a part of themselves behind on the beach.

At Holmeås 14, Svend stood in the front yard, greeting her with Gudrun in his arms. Even from a distance, Anette could see her daughter struggling to get down and go explore the world, ever impatient, only at rest when she was asleep. Just like her mother, Anette thought with pride. As she turned off the engine, Svend set their little girl down and let her toddle off into the bushes without looking back, her diapered butt swaying and those short arms sticking out, like a tightrope walker’s balance pole.

Anette let the dogs out of the car and went to kiss her husband. She put her hand up to the back of his head, prolonging the kiss.

“You’re all sweaty.” He gently pulled away from her embrace, caressed her cheek, and herded the dogs toward the front door. “But sexy!”

And as she peeled off her running clothes in front of the mirror, for the first time in their twenty-five-year-long relationship, she agreed with him. She had always had what her mother consistently called strong bones, maybe to protect Anette from the uncomfortable fact that she was fat. She had been the biggest girl in her class, the tallest with the broadest shoulders and the beefiest thighs. The one who won all the athletic disciplines and got picked first whenever they chose teams. Anette had never considered her size a problem, and Svend had never given her reason to think that he saw her as anything other than perfect, no matter how chubby she had been at times.