My son collapsed beside the bait freezer before my brother even bothered to set down his beer.

The marina shop smelled like diesel fuel, sunscreen, and melted ice.

A bell chimed weakly above the door every time another tourist walked in from the bright harbor.

Somewhere outside, gulls screamed over the docks, and motorboats knocked gently against their slips as if nothing terrible was happening inside.

Theo had been standing beside me with both arms wrapped around his middle.

He was thirteen, tall for his age but still narrow in the shoulders, still more boy than teenager when he was tired.

His skin had gone the pale gray of wet paper.

Sweat clung to his dark hair, and he kept trying to breathe quietly because my family hated anything that sounded like a complaint.

“Mom,” he whispered.

I turned toward him just as his knees folded.

The paper bag of ice he had been carrying slipped from his hand and hit the concrete.

Cubes skidded beneath the display of fishing gloves.

Theo struck the floor on his side and pulled his legs up with a sound he tried to swallow.

For one stunned second, the whole shop seemed to pause.

Then the clerk came around the counter.

A woman near the postcards gasped.

Someone outside shouted for space.

My mother sighed.

Celeste did not rush toward her grandson.

She did not say his name.

She made the same thin, disappointed sound she made when hotel towels were not soft enough.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said.

My stepfather, Grant, glanced down at Theo and then turned back to the clerk, his wallet still open.

My brother Nolan leaned against a cooler with a can in his hand, watching like Theo had interrupted a story he was enjoying.

Nolan’s wife, April, stood between racks of sunglasses while her two sons whispered the nickname they had been using since we arrived at the cottage.

Prince Pillow.

Prince Pillow fell down.

Prince Pillow needs his royal stretcher.

I dropped to my knees so fast my own bones cracked against the concrete.

Theo’s eyes were open but unfocused, his lashes wet, his lips moving.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Mom, I’m sorry.

I didn’t mean to make them mad.”

That sentence did something to me that anger had never managed.

It cleared the room.

Not literally.

My family was still there with their tanned arms, boat shoes, expensive sunglasses, and practiced annoyance.

But in my mind, the old room I had lived in my whole life—the one where Celeste’s approval was oxygen and Grant’s temper was weather—emptied out at once.

There was only my son on the floor.

“Call an ambulance,” I told the clerk.

Grant turned then.

“Mara, don’t be dramatic.

We’ll drive him if he needs—”

“Call an ambulance,” I repeated, louder.

The clerk was already dialing.

Theo squeezed my wrist hard enough to hurt.

I welcomed it.

Pain meant he was still with me.

“Look at me,” I told him.

“Only me.

Don’t listen to anyone else.”

His eyes found mine.

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, baby.

No.

You are not in trouble.”

Behind me, Celeste muttered, “You see? This is exactly what rewarding every little symptom creates.”

I did not turn around.

If I had, I might have said something I