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I used to love the beach.

Whenever real life grew to be too much, I would shut my eyes and dream of lying on the shore, sand crawling into my bikini, the sun’s rays kissing my skin with burnt pink lip gloss.

I never envisioned the waves crashing too close. Never thought the sun was too hot. Never painted the ocean as a figure roaring across enemy lines.

It never gave me a reason to.

Summers at Piper Island weren’t real life. At least, they didn’t feel like it, but now, after last summer, I’m surprised I have the courage to drive back and pretend nothing ever happened.

When the ocean appears over the causeway—a blurry mirage in the distance—I force a smile at it, cracking the window to let the salt air make a mess of my blonde hair.

It’s instinctual, how my fingers find the cold necklace resting on my clavicle. There, eight coquina clam shells dangle—one for each summer spent here.

A cluster of palm trees sprout across the road, their leaves swaying in the wind. People drive past me on Main Street with their hands surfing the air outside the windows. Last summer’s tan has wilted from my own arms, leaving my skin the color of dried sand. It almost made it the year, but winter eventually kills everything still reeling from summer.

Aunt Blair’s house is a shell of its former glory—like a coquina clam shell, I suppose, with the snail slurped right out of it. A hole left behind as evidence of the carnage.

The rocking chairs have lost their rock. Last year’s flowers lie dead in their pots. Sky blue paint, once so welcoming, peels off the siding. It has faded into a bleak kind of gray that sneaks up on the summer sky and scares you off the beach.

I get out of the car and inhale; I can smell the ocean nearby: lurking, waiting, ready to pounce. I exhale the same air through my nose, readying myself to enter the house.

I walk up to the porch. It takes ten knocks for the door to swing open.