She paused, looking lost in a memory before she focused again. “Finally, after high school my oldest two straightened out and began to fly right. My father found a way to get through to them when their father and I couldn’t. I think it was the threat of losing their inheritance, but however he managed it,” she said, waving a hand in the air, “it worked. But that left Jules, my youngest and most stubborn child. She hated how the community judged her and the way her classmates considered her a spoiled rich kid; therefore, she rebelled more than all her siblings put together. When she was eighteen, she met a boy who came from the mainland. Noah. At first I thought it was a relationship that would pass quickly. But with his free-spirited ways and reluctance to follow society’s rules, he won her over immediately. A few months later she snuck off and joined him in one of those tent colonies along the beaches.

“But I found her. You should’ve seen her face when I lifted the flap of their tent and saw her all tangled up with that boy, looking like some kind of ragged drifter. I know exactly what they were doing in there, and she’d never seen me so angry. I’m sure my eyes were flashing fire when I jerked her out of there.”

She paused for a breath.

“We argued, and from somewhere deep inside her, she matched me flame for flame, barb for barb. Everyone around us was afraid to step in. I think there on the beach with the waves roaring behind us, our hair whipping in the wind, and both of us trying to outscream the other, we looked like two enraged witches. I’ve never been one to hang our dirty laundry in public, but I was so mad—and she was too—that we laid out every single grievance against each other we’d been harboring since she was old enough to walk.

“It went on for far too long, but finally we both ran out of steam. When I begged her to come home, she refused. I couldn’t drag her back, so I left her there. I hired someone to check in on her frequently, just to make sure she was okay. It was humiliating. The whole town knew our daughter was down there living like a homeless person, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.

“That boy convinced her that she didn’t need us or our money—that all she needed was the clean ocean air and the freedom of the water, and they could live happily ever after on Spam and rice.”

Helen took a drink of her water and cleared her throat, but it was getting raspier the longer she talked. She looked quite ill.

“Do you want to take a break?” Carmen asked her.