“Remember our cabin-that rubbery, woody, salty smell?” Mélanie laughed. And then she cried out, “Oh, look, Tonio, the Plantier lighthouse! It looks tiny all of a sudden!”

Antoine couldn’t help smiling at her enthusiasm. But she was right. The lighthouse he had so admired as a child, which used to tower over the pine trees, seemed to have shrunk. That’s because you’ve grown up, buster, he thought to himself. Yup, you’ve grown up. But how he longed, all of a sudden, to be that kid on the beach again, that kid building sand castles, running along the pier and getting splinters in his feet, pulling on his mother’s arm for another glace à la fraise.

No, he wasn’t that kid anymore. He was a divorced, lonely middle-aged man whose life had never seemed emptier, never seemed sadder than today. His wife had left him, he despised his job, and his adorable kids had morphed into sullen teenagers. He was pulled away from his reminiscences by a bloodcurdling whoop. Mélanie, no longer by his side, had stripped to a daringly brief bikini and was flinging herself into the sea. He looked at her, flabbergasted. She seemed incandescent with joy, her long hair hanging like a black curtain down her back.

“Come on in, you noodle!” she yelled. “It’s divine!”

She pronounced divine the way Blanche used to, dee-vine. He hadn’t seen his sister in a bathing suit for years. She looked good, taut and firm. Certainly better than he did. He had put on weight in that initial dreary year of his divorce. Those lonely evenings in front of the computer or the DVD player had taken their toll. Gone was Astrid’s healthy, wholesome cooking, a perfect balance of protein, vitamins, and roughage. He now lived on frozen food and takeout, rich stuff you could heat up fast in the microwave, and it had nicely added on pounds during that first, unbearable winter.