When I see two people coming down the cliff toward me, I quickly dry my tears with the back of my hand. If I had a book, I could pretend I’m not as pathetic as I look, the abandoned birthday girl in a beached sailboat. It’s a tallish, blondish man in sunglasses and white linen, which flutters in the breeze, and a woman, also in white, coming down behind him. They keep stopping on the path as they descend, and he points out different features of the landscape. It’s a windy day, and they both sort of flutter together like they’re walking through a painting. I have never seen anybody but me on this beach, and I wait for them to realize they’re in the wrong place, turn around, and go away. They keep coming down, and when they reach the beach, I realize that it’s my uncle, who is hardly ever here in the summer. His name is Hugh. People say he looks like my father. The woman he’s with wears gold sandals and a white bathing suit and a sheer sarong knotted at the side of her waist. They smile gaily as they approach me and then greet me, then stoop down and kiss me on both cheeks, like we’re in Europe.

“Hey, kid,” Hugh says. “Remember me?”

I nod. “Hi,” I whisper, my voice having atrophied over the last month.

“And this is Sabine.” Sabine sort of squints up her face at me, which must be how people as glamorous as her smile at people as unglamorous as me.

“Nice to meet you,” I whisper, and then feel even more stupid than before.

“That’s a nice hat,” Hugh says. “Where’d you get it?”

“Here, last summer,” I tell him. “It was on the third floor of the house.”

“What’s your grandmother think of it?”

“Not too much.”

That makes him laugh. “I bet she doesn’t,” he says. “She says you’re quite the reader. Do you hole up on the third floor all day?”

“No,” I answer. “I go sailing, too. A lot.” I explain about the books and the boat and the cove, but the more I talk, the more inane I get, and I’m sure he thinks I’m a moron. Sometimes you meet a person who is as smart as you pretend to be, and then you realize your whole personality depends on the stupidity of your surroundings, and then once you realize that, you should stop talking.

Hugh smiles. “Reading and sailing,” he says. “It must be genetic.”

“Oh.” I wonder if this is a reference to my father, but he just puts his hands in his pockets and looks out to sea.

“We should get back here more,” Hugh says to Sabine. “I always forget how pretty it is in the summer.”

“Beautiful,” Sabine replies. “The colors. I feel like I’m in a watercolor painting.”