I wondered if one of them could be my sister. Swiftly I checked to see if my mother had noticed. She was focused on the children, her back straight in her red swimsuit. She watched as they passed in a line, hitched to one another, their frail legs marching forward. My father was now rushing toward us, his big feet dragging through the sand, alarm on his kind face.

“Candace,” he said to her. “Let’s go.”

That night, the storm rolled off the Atlantic and rattled the glass windows of the bungalow, whipping up the trees. Lightning cracked the sky open again and again above us. Thunder boomed. My father set a cup of hot chocolate in a pool of light on the table. The outer edges of the room were in darkness. My mother had not come out of her room since we’d gotten back from the beach. Sometimes these spells lasted for weeks. I raised the cup to my lips.

“We’d better leave,” he said. His bald head, like a lumpy potato, looked too big for his body.

“We have two more days.” I heard the whine in my voice and was ashamed.

“There’s no point, sweetheart. She’ll never go back to the beach now. I’m sorry.”

“Do you think E was there? On the beach?”

“Oh no, darling. She’s hours away, safe in her bed.”

We drove back from Montauk in the morning. When we got home, my mother slipped off the passenger seat and rushed into the house.