She turned her head to meet Tilly’s eyes, and instead, to her intrigue, found Tilly’s eyes locked on her bare abdomen. Caught, Tilly pulled her gaze away.

Licking sea salt from her lips, Kate looked out at the sunlight glinting on the water. What the hell was that about? She resisted the urge to glance down at her belly, at the slightly apparent muscles above the band of her bikini bottoms.

“Remember when I got that portable CD player for Christmas and we’d come down here and dance?” Kate said, shivering as icy droplets chased down the back of her neck.

“I would dance,” Tilly corrected, her long plait swinging between her shoulder blades as she reclined on her elbows. “You just lay back on the sand and watched.”

Tilly shook her head, a small smile playing at her lips. “We went through so many batteries.”

And sixteen-year-old me would have bought shares in Eveready if it meant spending the rest of my days watching you dance in the cove…

Reclined in the shallow water at the shore, Emma and Grace called out to Lockie, but he ignored their incessant calls, happy to lounge halfway out on the sandbar in peace.

Sighing, Kate shifted on the towel, her elbows digging into the sand. “I’m going to miss all this,” she confessed. “I think this has been the most rewarding teaching position I’ve ever had.”

Tilly held her stare before she looked out to the bay, the short sleeves of her denim dress fluttering in the breeze. “Mine was working at a small school in Papua New Guinea,” she said. “But then an earthquake destroyed it.”

Kate tensed, the revelation settling heavily between them. Tilly had never mentioned that. “I had no idea you were ever in danger…” she said. “Not like that. I don’t remember ever hearing about an earthquake while you were there—when I thought you were there.”

Briefly, Tilly’s gaze flickered to hers, then away. “It only hit a very small part of the remote east coast, at night. Seven point two on the Richter scale,” she said softly. “We lost so many children. Families…” Tilly’s eyes brightened with tears. “I stayed for a while, to help, but I left not long after.”

Kate watched Tilly’s fingers twitch against the towel. “How old were you?” she asked.

“I came home to Australia a week before my twentieth birthday and started uni the very next semester,” Tilly rasped. She drew the back of her wrist across her cheek and Kate’s chest pulled tight. “That trip changed things for me,” Tilly admitted. “It changed me.”

As she looked out at the girls, Kate covered Tilly’s fingers with her own. It was a helpless feeling—wanting to offer all the sympathy she was capable of giving yet knowing she would never fully comprehend the tragedy Tilly had witnessed, endured, at such a young age. “Of course it did,” she said quietly. Their eyes locked. “It would change anybody. And, hey, if you ever want to talk about it all…I’m here.”