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becoming narrow and winding. Nate pulled over at a one-lane bridge to give way to a lumbering dairy tanker, letting the dust of the unsealed road settle behind it before he accelerated. How many times had he traveled this way, heading to the bach—beach house—of his favorite couple? Usually with Lee, Ross and Dan, sometimes alone. Looking forward to R & R—diving for crays and scallops, fishing off the bridge, surfing when there was a swell.
    His pulse started to beat faster as the car bypassed the mangrove swamps. They were close. Nate wound down the driver’s window, inhaled the swampy-salty odor of mudflats exposed by low tide. Some of the happiest times in his life had been spent here. Glancing at Claire, he wondered how she could stand returning now. Except her memories predated Steve’s arrival in her life. Her family had holidayed in Stingray Bay for four generations, and she’d inherited the bach from her father. That probably offset the deep sadness making him grip the steering wheel.
    “Are we here already?” Opening her eyes, Claire yawned and sat up.
    He blinked hard. “Just about.” The Caddy swung left onto the thumb of land that ended at the mouth of an estuary that divided Stingray Bay North and South.
    Amidst the rush of coastal development, the sleepy settlement remained a nostalgic relic. Though the outhouses had been superseded by indoor plumbing, most of the four hundred dwellings were the original baches clad with fiber cement board. The permanent population of a few hundred swelled to four times that in summer, which coincided with the opening of the only store at the campground.
    It was a place where inhabitants measured their day by the tides.… Collecting shellfish in the estuary when it was low, launching the aluminum dinghy—tinny—when it was high, and in-between times sitting in deck chairs and watching its slow ebb and flow.
    A place where you got out of your vehicle on arrival and didn’t climb in it until departure, where nightlife was a game of Monopoly or cards and the only way to reach the store was to walk across the footbridge separating Stingray North and South or kayak across the estuary. There was no direct road access between the halves. To reach one from the other by car you had to drive for forty-five minutes around the mainland.
    Toward the end of the tiny peninsula, the road became gravel driveway and Nate steered the Caddy into the communal grass yard behind a row of old baches. No one put up fences here. Claire’s bach sat at the end, freshly painted blue fiber cement board siding with white trim, patio doors at both ends and a corrugated-iron roof.
    The bathroom was a lean-to accessed from the front deck, which stepped down to a lawn of hardy kikuyu grass and overlooked the wide estuary and the baches of Stingray South, five hundred meters across the water. The rear deck gave a peep of the ocean beach, which lay below a rise some twelve feet from the rear boundary. It had always been a spectacular location.
    Claire handed him the house key, sliding over to the driver’s seat as he got out of the car. “I’ll be back around nine tonight.” She was going home to Whangarei to change vehicles, catch up with Steve’s mother and gather the paperwork for Nate to read over before their appointments tomorrow. “Help yourself to what’s in the freezer. I’ll bring fresh supplies with me.”
    She waited while Nate retrieved his weekend bag from the trunk. “And if you feel like taking a look at Heaven Sent, she’s in the boat shed near the footbridge. There’s a key for it on a hook beside the fridge.”
    With a nod, he went to close her door, but she reached out and held it open. “Are you sure you’re okay…being here?”
    “Drive carefully,” he said and clicked it shut.
    When the Caddy had rumbled out of sight, he sat at the sturdy wooden picnic table on the deck looking out to the estuary, his bag beside him. It was a typical September day, the wind a