She checked the time. Eight fifteen.
Upstairs, the girls’ room was dim and cool, the ceiling fan rustling a pile of coloring pages on the dresser. Addie lay curled in Betsy’s grandmother’s white knit blanket. Walsh had flung all her covers off and lay stretched out flat, arms overhead. Betsy stroked the girls’ arms and faces until they woke.
“How about a trip to the beach today?” she whispered.
With a note left on the counter—as cool and impersonal as Ty’s text—Betsy and the girls left with a cooler of food and two bags stuffed full of towels and sunscreen.
The public beach in Gulf Shores was packed, umbrella to umbrella in some spots. Sand buckets, beach towels, foldout chairs, and Yeti coolers filled every available inch of white sand. It was only a matter of days before the parking lots and high-rise condos emptied out, everyone chased away by the threat of screaming winds and fierce undertow. But today, the sun was still bright.
Betsy took one look at Addie and Walsh, the glee on their faces when they saw the sparkling blue water, and packed them back into the car.
“We’re leaving?” they asked, verging on tears.
“Just moving down the beach a ways.”
Betsy drove through Orange Beach, past the Flora-Bama, then onto the narrow two-lane road that ran through Perdido Key only a few hundred yards from the Gulf. She pulled off the road onto an oyster-shell parking lot. A long walkway led to the beach, and the crowd was lighter here. It wasn’t empty, but tourists were no longer jostled together like pickup sticks.
Betsy and the girls gathered their bags and began the walk past mounds of sand dunes, some topped with waving sea oats, others covered in gnarled shrubs and oaks. The salt-tinged breeze whipped around their faces, sharp and damp, stronger than usual. As they approached the water, the walkway dissolved into sand, sugar white and powder fine.
Addie and Walsh dropped their towels and buckets and darted toward the water. They squealed when the water touched their toes, then backpedaled to dry sand. After a few excited minutes, they settled down, Addie with a bucket and shovel, and Walsh squatting low watching coquina clams burrow into the wet sand after each wave receded.
Betsy flagged down a teenager renting beach chairs and paid for two long padded chairs with a large umbrella between them. With the girls happy in the sand, their pale skin slathered in sunscreen, Betsy sank into the soft chair. It had been a while—a year at least—since she’d been to the beach. Living just twenty miles from the Gulf, it was a shame, regardless of how the farm and field trips took up her time. Knots of tension in her shoulders and neck began to loosen, one knot at a time.
Time passed quickly as the sun made its arc through the sky. When it was overhead, Betsy called to the girls and pulled from the cooler their Ziploc bags of sandwiches, apple slices, and crackers and three bottles of water. Addie and Walsh sat in the shade of the umbrella with their legs crisscrossed, a thin layer of sand covering much of their skin.
Betsy watched the water as she ate. On such a clear day, it was hard to imagine a storm swirling almost directly south of them. The waves were still slow and lazy.
“Why don’t you come here every day?” Addie asked around a mouthful of Ritz crackers.
“It’s a little far to come every day, but I should come more often,” Betsy said.
“I think Uncle Ty would like it,” Addie said.
“You do?”
Addie nodded. “Maybe you could come on a date.”
“A date? What do you know about a date?”
“It’s what you do when you love someone.”
“Oh, I see,” Betsy said. “Have you ever been on a date?”
Addie nodded. “Mommy takes me on dates sometimes. She picks me up from school and takes me to the park for Mommy-Addie dates. She does it with Walsh sometimes too, but not together. We each get our own dates.”
Walsh nodded. “We eat cookies and swing and slide.”
“That sounds like fun,” Betsy said.
“Yep.” Addie chewed thoughtfully for a moment. Betsy watched them. They so rarely talked about Jenna, even when Betsy knew they were thinking of her. It was like a plug kept their words in tight.
After lunch and making drip castles in the wet sand, Walsh climbed up on the chair next to Betsy and laid her head down.
“Are you tired, sweetheart?”
Walsh shook her head no.
“If you want to close your eyes, you can. I’ll wake you up if I see a dolphin.”
“Okay,” Walsh said, her eyes heavy.
Addie joined her not long after. “I’m not tired, I’m just going to rest a little bit.” She sat back against Betsy’s shins. After a few minutes, Addie dozed next to her sister.
Betsy pulled out her phone to check the time. Half expecting to see a text from Ty, she was disappointed to see only a red banner at the bottom of her phone alerting her to the hurricane watch in effect for the coast. She tucked her phone back into the bag and closed her eyes.
Ty was the proverbial man of few words, but when he spoke, what he said was important. Each word measured and careful. Because she’d been on the receiving end of such sweet, thoughtful words from him, the absence of his words now felt like a knife twist.
While the girls slept, she returned to a conversation she’d had with Ty a few days after their last appointment with Dr. Fields back in January. She’d canceled two field trips, unable to muster the energy necessary to keep the kids’ attention. Ty had found her lying in bed at noon, fully clothed, with the lights off. He sat next to her.
“I just need a few minutes.” She wiped tears off her cheeks. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m worried about you, babe.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” Why couldn’t she be more like him? Somehow he was able to
