“What are you doing out here?” Audra asked, opening one of the two leaves of the door. Maggie ducked inside without an invitation, her parka beaded with the cold drizzle of coastal rain.

“Came for a visit.” Maggie shook water off her sleeves and onto the redbrick floor of the entryway. “I haven’t seen you in a few days, so, you know, just figured I’d check in, make sure everything was okay.”

Audra offered her only friend a light smile of thanks. It was the little things—like an unexpected visit on a rainy afternoon—that made Audra count her blessings for living less than a mile from Marguerite James; though, she never went by Marguerite, but by Maggie. It was a name she claimed suited her better than the stuffy moniker on her birth certificate. Maggie had a sixth sense. She always seemed to know when to drop in or give Audra a ring, was always intuitive of when to invite her over for dinner or drag her out of the house to wander the shops of Pier Pointe. Most times, Audra resisted the invitations, but Maggie wasn’t one to be easily swayed.

“Everything’s fine.” Audra shut the door against the bluster of wind before following Maggie into the living room. Shadow, her German shepherd, lazily lifted his head from the arm of the couch to regard their visitor, smacked his chops, and went back to his nap. “Did you . . .” Audra paused, peering at Maggie’s damp Audrey Hepburn–style hair. “Did you walk here?”

“Had to get out of the house.” She shrugged, dismissing the weather.

“Where’s Eloise?”

“Day care.” Approaching the couch, Maggie laid a hand atop Shadow’s head.

“Since when?”

“Since this past Monday. Too much time in the house, not enough time with other kids. The same could be said of you, you know. Are you really watching I Dream of Jeannie?”

“What’s wrong with I Dream of Jeannie?” Audra coiled her arms across the sweater that hung limp and oversized from her petite frame. Maggie gave her a look, then shook her head in a motherly sort of way that, had Audra’s own mother possessed a matronly bone in her body, she may have resented. But her mom had filled out an absentee ballot after completing Audra’s birth certificate, resolving to be a Seattle socialite rather than a doting parent. Audra wouldn’t admit it, but she liked being looked after. It was nice to know that someone cared about how she was, what she was doing, whether she was eating, and whether she was taking her pills.

“When was the last time you went outside?” Maggie looked away from the TV and leveled her gaze on Audra’s face. “You look pale. I don’t like it.”

Audra lifted her shoulders to her ears, feigning amnesia. It could have been yesterday. It could have been two weeks ago.

Maggie frowned. “Okay,” she said, her tone resolute. “Get dressed.”

“For what?”

“For a walk.”

“A walk?” Audra nearly laughed. “You do realize it’s raining, right? Just because you’re a crackpot . . .”

Maggie’s expression went stern. Audra suggesting Maggie was nuts was like an alligator accusing a crocodile of having too many teeth.

“It’s just a drizzle,” Maggie insisted, holding firm. “Besides, it’ll do both you and Shadow some good. Look at him.” Shadow rolled his big eyes back and forth between them without lifting his head. “The poor thing is listless. He needs to get out, run around.”

Audra shut her eyes and exhaled a slow breath. She didn’t want to go outside, didn’t want to walk in the rain, but Maggie was right. She’d spent too much time cooped up. If she wasn’t going to give in for Maggie, she at least had to surrender for the sake of her dog.

“Audra . . .”

“Fine, fine.” Audra held up her hands, not wanting to be nagged. “Just let me get changed and we’ll go.”

Apparently satisfied, Maggie sat down next to Shadow on the couch to wait. All the while, Jeannie blinked and nodded her head while waiting for Major Tony Nelson to come home; a perfect life, nothing short of a magic trick.

·   ·   ·

The beach was cold. Audra gritted her teeth against the wind, the hood of her parka cinched so tight around her face it was a wonder she could see the coast. “This is stupid,” she mumbled to herself, her sneakers sinking into the damp sand with each labored step. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Audra loved Maggie, but she hadn’t moved to Pier Pointe to take romantic midwinter walks along the shore.

Her father had nearly forbidden the move. Not in your condition, he had said. You’ve got a doctor here in the city. Pier Pointe is too small; you’ll never find a qualified physician there. Except that she actually had, and Congressman Terry Snow had given up the fight and ponied up the keys to the family’s abandoned coastal home. That had been two years ago—seven hundred and thirty days—and she was able to count the number of times her oh-so-worried father had called on a single hand. She’d spoken to her mother even less, but it was for the best. Congressmen weren’t supposed to father manic children. It was bad for his reelection campaign.

Shadow let out a series of barks and Audra looked up from the sand. There, in the distance, a group of four people were milling about a bonfire that had managed to stay lit despite the drizzling rain. A pair of red tents were staked into the sand, shivering in the wind. She pictured the tents taking flight, bursting into flame as they soared across the dancing fire. And then they’d drift over the expansive ocean like a couple of burning Kongming lanterns, red and glowing against a steel-gray sky.

“Are they really camping out here?” Audra directed her question toward her friend, but the wind stole her words. Maggie marched ahead while Audra’s steps lagged, leaving her to bring up the rear of their trio. By the time she picked up the pace to catch up to her friend, Shadow had reached the group in his mad dash across the beach.

When she finally reached the campsite, three pretty girls were rubbing Shadow’s ears, cooing over how cute he was. Maggie was sitting near the bonfire, as though she’d been there all afternoon rather than the sixty seconds it took Audra to catch up. Maggie was always one to quickly take to strangers, but this particular instance struck Audra as a world record. Maggie looked leisurely as she shared a joint with a guy who appeared like a young Tom Selleck. His hair whipped wild in the wind. And while his face and hands and clothes were clean, he immediately struck Audra as a true child of the earth.

The man rose to his feet and extended a hand in greeting.

“Welcome,” he said. “I’m Deacon. Come, sit with us.” Audra’s gaze drifted to Maggie, unsure, searching for approval while simultaneously scrutinizing her friend’s overly comfortable posture. Crowds made Audra uncomfortable. Strangers made her anxious. Maggie, on the other hand, looked as though she’d met this odd assembly of nomads before.

Deacon continued to stand, waiting for Audra to take his place around the fire. Neither Deacon nor the three girls with him wore much to protect themselves against the cold or rain. Deacon’s cowboy boots were half-buried in the sand. The mother-of-pearl snaps on his Western-style shirt glinted in the pale gray of the afternoon. The girls wore ankle-length skirts in a riot of colors—hues more suited for sunshine than rain. And yet none of the four seemed to mind the drizzle or the cold, as though inviting purification. The Washington sky offered a divine sort of baptism.

Audra reluctantly took Deacon’s hand, releasing it a moment later to pull her parka even tighter around herself. Maggie rose halfway from where she sat, seized Audra by the arm, and tugged her down to the piece of driftwood by the fire. There was no getting away. Maggie quickly made her insistence known.

“This is Audra,” she said, offering an introduction when Audra failed to do so herself. “She’s a little shy.”