Chapter 5: Tea at the Beach House

I drove out to the beach house that afternoon with the receipt in my pocket and Junie asleep in the back seat.

My father had offered to keep her, but I wanted her where I could see her.

The house was a low gray cottage on the island, with a screen porch and a path of broken shells.

Colt and I had bought it the year we married, and I had painted that porch ceiling blue myself.

Camille opened the door before I knocked.

"I saw the car from the window," she said. "Oh, and look at her. Come in, come in."

She lifted Junie out of the seat without asking.

Junie, who hated being passed around, put her head on Camille's shoulder.

That nearly undid me.

The kitchen was as I had left it, except for a second toothbrush in the cup and a stack of sympathy cards.

A pot of tea was already steeping.

"I made it when I saw you pull in," Camille said. "You looked like you needed it."

I sat.

She poured, and she kept Junie on her hip, and she talked about the weather and the herons.

I put the receipt on the table between the cups.

"The grandmother brought me this," I said. "It's the receipt for her bake sale money."

"And?"

"It came back with Dean's signature."

Camille looked at it for a while.

"Last June," she said.

"Yes."

"Dean died in March."

"I know when he died, Camille."

"I know you do." She sat down slowly, with Junie on her lap.

"I don't think I ever told you this," she said. "In his last month Dean worried about the books."

"What about them?"

"He signed those acknowledgments ahead of time, a hundred at a time. He wanted the donors to get their letters fast."

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