Madison was wiser than any of them. It was time, Ellis thought, to go home. She was already devising a game plan for packing up: stripping all the beds, running a last load of laundry, disposing of the refrigerator’s contents, loading the car. What she would not think about, under any circumstances, was what she would be leaving behind.

She heard the low rumble of a diesel motor coming from the front of the house and ran to see what it was. A flatbed trailer was parked in the driveway, and a handful of men were waving and directing as a bright yellow bulldozer inched its way down a steel loading ramp.

When the operator had maneuvered the dozer off the ramp, a man in an orange safety vest and a hard hat ran over, jumped into the cab, and conferred with the driver. A moment later, the hard hat guy was back in the driveway, waving and pointing at the garage—and Ty’s apartment. But there was no sign of Ty. His Bronco was gone, and the garage was empty.

Now Ellis noticed a huge jumble of stuff piled off to the side of the garage—its former contents: a three-legged ping-pong table; a stack of bald tires; a rusty barbecue grill; the skeletons of aluminum lawn chairs; even a small, wooden skiff with a rotted-out hull. And a surfboard. A faded yellow surfboard.

As she watched, the bulldozer lumbered purposefully towards the garage, aiming at the support beam that separated the two parking bays. She closed her eyes, and a moment later, she heard the sickening sound of boards snapping, beams tumbling to the ground, the garage sliding easily, effortlessly to the ground, with a thud she felt as well as heard.

She heard whistles and applause, and when she opened her eyes, a cloud of dust and sand still swirled in the air around the demolished garage.

Ellis felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw Madison standing beside her.

“I saw the trucks coming from my bedroom window,” Madison said. “I came down because I had half an idea you might still be up there,” she jerked her head in the direction of where the apartment had stood, “with Ty.”

They heard the screen door open and slap shut behind them. Julia and Dorie joined them on the porch, barefoot, in their pajamas.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Julia exclaimed, gaping at the remains of the garage. “I heard that crash and I thought somebody’d dropped a bomb on the place.”

“Wow,” Dorie said. “That didn’t take long.”

“Where’s Ty?” Julia asked. “How was your last night together in the love shack?”

Ellis stuck her hands in the pockets of her shorts. “I don’t know where Ty’s gone. I didn’t spend the night. We … had a fight. Not a fight, per se, but…”

“Oh Jesus,” Julia groaned. “Don’t tell me you guys broke up. Don’t tell me you actually want to take that stupid job at that stupid bank in Seattle.”

“I told Dana I’d get back to her Monday,” Ellis said. “You wouldn’t understand, but this is just too good an offer to pass up. Ty doesn’t understand either. So probably we just weren’t meant to be.”

Dorie gave her a hug. “Oh, Ellie-Belly. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Ellis said. “He wants me to stay here, to live on love and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. It’s sweet, but it won’t work. One of us has to have a job, and benefits … and common sense.”

“Let me guess,” Julia drawled. “That someone would be you.”

“Don’t start,” Ellis warned. “I am not in the mood for relationship advice.”

*   *   *

By noon, the remains of the old garage had been scraped up and loaded onto a dump truck headed for the landfill. More lumber trucks and pickup trucks arrived, and even from the beach, the women could hear the whine of power saws and the sharp bursts of nail guns.

“One more day,” Julia said under her breath, glancing over at Ellis, who’d deliberately set up her beach chair and umbrella several yards away from Dorie, Julia, and Madison. “Our last full day at the beach, and she manages to screw it up for all of us.”

“I can’t believe she’s just going to walk away and leave Ty,” Dorie said, keeping her voice low. “He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her, and tomorrow she’s just going to get in her car and drive back to Philly—and then pick up and move across the country?”

Madison sat cross-legged on her blanket, sipping from a cold bottle of water. “Maybe she’s just not ready for a relationship. To commit.”

“Hah!” Julia chortled. “You don’t know Ellis. Nobody was ever more ready for a relationship than Ellis. Before Ty, she hadn’t been with a man in, like, dog years.”

“Ellis got married right out of college to this totally inappropriate guy,” Dorie said, filling Madison in.

“The marriage was over before she got the wedding dress back from the dry cleaner’s,” Julia added. “Literally. Right, Dorie?”

“She was devastated,” Dorie agreed. “It stunted her emotionally. For years.”

“She buried herself in work at that damned bank, never took a vacation, and then, poof! They go and downsize her. She wakes up and realizes she’s thirty-five, single, with no prospects in sight. And then garage guy walks in, and sweeps her right out of those damned sensible shoes of hers. But because Ty doesn’t have a 401(k) and he doesn’t fit into her game plan, she refuses to consider how right they are for each other,” Julia said, glancing furtively at Ellis to make sure she couldn’t hear her life being dissected.

“Look at her, poor thing,” Dorie whispered, nodding towards Ellis, who had dozed off, facedown on her chair. “She was probably up all night crying after their big fight.”

“It’s sad,” Madison observed.

“Ellis never talks about it, but I know she’s always wanted a family,” Dorie said. “That’s what’s so heartbreaking. She could have that with Ty. I mean, he’s perfect for her.”

“And hot. Smokin’ hot,” Julia pointed out.

“They did seem pretty sweet together,” Madison said. “But she’s a grown-up, right? And she knows what will and won’t work for her.”

“Not this time,” Dorie said. She looked at Julia. “We’ve got to do something. And quick.”

Julia jumped to her feet, tiptoed over to the sleeping Ellis, grabbed her beach tote, and brought it over to her own chair. She rummaged around inside the bag, setting aside sunblock, lipblock, paperback novel, and a notepad containing Ellis’s to-do list. Finally, jubilantly, she held up Ellis’s cell phone. “Don’t worry,” she told the others. “I’m on it.”

*   *   *

The tiny print on the computer screen seemed to swim before his eyes. The agribusiness start-up he’d been following was announcing its IPO. He glanced over at the notes he’d made. The research was more than promising. The opening stock price was ridiculously low—four dollars a share? Two months ago, he’d have taken the plunge, gone all in. He had a little cushion now, with the cash from the movie people, so why couldn’t he make himself place the stock order?

Ty shook his head, got up from the wooden table he’d moved over to his new cottage, and walked out to the screened porch. The sky was crystal blue, cloudless, a slight breeze coming off the beach. He stretched and rotated his shoulders. He’d been at the computer most of the morning, deliberately avoiding Ebbtide.

He hadn’t actually planned to move over to Pelican until later in the day, but after the breakup with Ellis the night before, he hadn’t seen any point in staying in the apartment another night. He’d sat at the kitchen table, drinking half the bottle of wine, then dumping the rest down the sink before he loaded his stuff in the Bronco and moved it over to Pelican Cottage sometime after midnight.

Instead of making him sleepy, the wine had made him annoyingly hyper. So he’d spent the early morning hours burying himself in the minutiae of day trading.

It was nearly eleven now, and he knew the garage was gone, because Joe had e-mailed him a photo taken at the precise moment the rotted wooden structure collapsed into the sand. Ty had glanced at the photo and deleted it. Not a moment he wanted to celebrate.