"I'm told it's a free country," said Gussie, holding her. "Even in North Carolina."
Coralie came out last. She was in a Columbus Crew T-shirt and cutoff shorts and her feet were bare, and she had her phone in her hand, out of habit, and when she saw her mother she put the phone in her back pocket very slowly, as though putting down a weapon.
Nobody on the porch said anything. Below them, on the boardwalk, Tadeo looked from face to face, holding up his net with the furious crab in it, and his own face slowly fell, because he was eight and not stupid, and he could feel the weather change.
"Tadeo," said Gussie, "does that crab need to go in a bucket?"
"Yes," he said uncertainly.
"Then let's go put him in one. Zinnia, will you help him?"
Zinnia let go and wiped her face with the back of her wrist and took Tadeo by the shoulder and steered him toward the outdoor shower, where a bucket stood, and Gussie walked the rest of the way up the boardwalk alone and stood at the foot of the twenty-two stairs and looked up at her children.
"Mom," Ramsay began.
"Don't," said Gussie. "Don't start with the audit, honey. I don't think I could stand it. I think if you say the word audit to me right now I'll have to sit down in the sand and laugh until somebody calls an ambulance, and the nearest hospital is an hour and a half away. I checked."
Ramsay closed his mouth.
"I'm going to come up these stairs," she said. "It's going to take me a minute, because there are twenty-two of them and I've been driving for two days. Nobody needs to come help me. And when I get to the top, I would very much like a glass of iced tea and a chair in the shade. Then we can talk."
She came up the stairs. It took her a minute. Nobody came to help her, though she could see Ramsay's hands open and close at his sides the whole way, and at the top Sunita had a glass of iced tea waiting, sweating in her hand, and held it out without a word, and her eyes were wet.
"I'm sorry," Sunita said. "I texted you. I'm so sorry."
"I know you are," said Gussie, and took the tea, and kissed her daughter-in-law on the cheek, because Sunita had texted, and it counted.
Then she turned to the tall old man standing by the screen.
He had gotten old. That was the first and stupidest thought she had, and she let herself have it. She had known it, of course. She was old herself. But in her head he had stayed forty-seven, which was how old he had been the morning he carried two suitcases out to the car and drove away to Gaylene, broad-shouldered and dark-haired and too handsome for his own good or anybody else's. The man in front of her was thin in a way that had nothing to do with exercise. His skin had a grayish-yellow cast under the beach tan, and his ankles above