"He spelled 'irreplaceable' right," Margaret said, without looking up. "Did you know that? Thirteen years old. I-r-r-e. I had to look it up myself to check."
"Mrs. Pruitt helped him."
"He says he's sorry he broke my mother's cake plate and he knows it's irreplaceable and he's been saving his allowance to buy me a new one even though it won't be the same one, and he's got forty-one dollars so far." Margaret folded the letter along its creases. "He says the cake was very good, before."
Laura sat down in the chair beside her.
"I wanted to tell you something," Margaret said. "And I'm only going to be able to say it once, so don't interrupt me. That summer. Myrtle Beach. Your father didn't want to leave you. He fought me about it for a week. I told him you needed to learn a lesson. I told him it was for your own good." She was looking out at the ocean. "It wasn't for your own good. It was for mine. You were so much like my mother, Laura. Loud and bright and too much, and she used to look at me the way you looked at me that Christmas, like I'd failed you, and I couldn't stand it. So I sent you away. And when we came back you were so quiet. You were quiet for the rest of your life. And I told myself that meant it had worked."
The waves came in and went out.
"I saw you standing in my kitchen at Easter," Margaret said, "and I thought, she's going to do it too. And some terrible part of me was glad. Because then it wouldn't just be me." She finally turned to look at her daughter. "I'm sorry, Laura. I'm sorry for that summer. I'm sorry for Easter. I don't know if those are the same apology. I suspect they are."
Laura didn't trust herself to speak. So she reached out and took her mother's hand, which was thin and cool and covered in age spots, and they sat together on the dark deck and listened to the ocean, and for once neither of them watched the other's face.
On the morning of June twenty-sixth, Laura's alarm went off at four-forty-five.
She got up without waking Mark and went down the hall and found Eli already dressed, sitting on the edge of his bed in the little room off the kitchen, binoculars around his neck, notebook in hand. He looked up at her in surprise.
"Dad's coming," he said. "He promised."
"Dad's coming," Laura agreed. "I just thought maybe I could come too. If that's okay with you. It's your birthday. You get to decide."
Eli thought about it with great seriousness.
"You have to be quiet," he said. "Oystercatchers spook easy."
"I'm very good at being quiet," Laura said. "I've had a lot of practice."
Mark came stumbling out a minute later with his shoes untied, and the three of them walked south along the beach in the blue half-light, past the sleeping houses on their pilings, past the fishing pier with its lights still on, toward the inlet. The sand was cold and packed hard. The ocean was flat and pewter-colored, breathing in and out. Eli walked ahead of them, stopping every few yards to scan the tide line with his binoculars, and twice he held up a hand without turning around, and they stopped, and waited, and then he shook his head and went on.