The Shell Collector (29 page)

“Seat belt,” I tell her. “I want to hear it click.”

“But we’re practically there!”

“And you practically have the ice cream I’m practically going to buy you once we get to the boardwalk.”

“Okay, okay.”

I glance at Ness and see him smiling as Holly buckles up. “Clickety click,” she says for emphasis from the back seat.

We find a parking space near one of the beach accesses. A wooden flight of stairs arches over the grassy dunes. Holly races ahead, flip-flops in one hand and snorkel mask in the other, while Ness and I carry the cooler between us.

“All the beaches I own,” he tells me, once Holly is out of earshot, “and this is where you want to spend our holiday.”

“This is where I used to come as a child,” I tell him. “Besides, how can we see if we’re winning the war unless we visit the front lines?”

He grumbles his disagreement. I think he’s worried someone might recognize him. But the last time that happened, he only had to pose for a selfie. No one spit on him. He’s still not used to that.

We stake out a space on the crowded beach. Holly has already—and unsurprisingly—made friends. She asks if she can go in the water. I make sure the lifeguards are watching the waves and not flirting with tourists, and I give her a thumbs-up. Ness and I lay out the blanket. He puts sunscreen on my shoulders, and I return the favor.

I had hoped to see shells washing up, being discovered, a sign that our illicit wildlife preserve just north of here was beginning to have some distant impact. Beyond the breakers, snorkelers dive deep, their fins kicking in the air, disappearing, and then their heads bobbing back to the surface with whale-like plumes of water spraying from their snorkels.

A good sign. Something down there worth diving for. But it’s the kid Holly’s age who comes running to his parents with an object in his fist that gives me hope. I watch as the father checks the boy’s shell and goes from being proud to horrified. “It’s still alive, son,” he says, and makes his boy rush as fast as he can to put it back in the water.

The parents look at each other in silence, eyes wide, while I squeeze Ness’s hand.

“This is why I wanted to come,” I tell him.

“If you love it so much, maybe we’ll come back for our honeymoon,” he says.

I nearly call his bluff and accept, but decide to tease him further. “I’ve got a better idea. There’s this great lake I’ve heard about in Scotland—”

Ness wrestles me down on the blanket and kisses me. “I don’t think so,” he says, rubbing his stubble against my neck. When he sits up, peering down at me, I reach out and run my thumb along the scar on his cheek.

“Stop it,” he says. And I know he means to stop thinking what I’m thinking, to stop blaming myself, not to stop touching him.

“I love you,” I say. It’s rare that I get to say it first. And while Ness gets mad when I apologize, he never seems to notice when I say I’m sorry in some other way.

“So what’s the plan tomorrow?” he asks. “Want to rent a boat?”

“It might rain tomorrow,” I tell him.

“The Society won’t be happy about that.”

I smile.

“Hey,” he says, “I can always take Holly to the arcade if you want some quiet time to work on your article.”

“I think we have to stop calling it an article,” I tell him. “It’s gone way past that. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a book.”

“Even better. I can’t wait to read it.”

I prop myself on my elbow and watch the boy reluctantly release his catch back into the sea. The ocean still has something to give, it seems. It just takes us giving a little back.

“You’ll be the first one,” I promise him. And this is how the book will end, I decide. How it
should
end. The story of the great shell collector will close with the death of his hobby. And the start of something else.