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up the test results for you,” said Jim. “You all can head back to Lake Norman in the morning.”
    “We’re staying at the house in Oriental,” said Bender.
    “We love that house,” Jim said to Saphora. “Thanks for letting me take Jeanie and the kids there. That river is the Neuse, right?”
    “Yes, the Neuse,” said Saphora. Bender’s friends knew more about the place than she did. She had not seen it since they had closed on the house.
    Jim said, “Once they nail down the type of cancer you have, we’ll talk about whether you’ll need my help or a different specialist’s.”
    “Isn’t it lymphoma?” asked Saphora. Bender had said it, she thought. But then she realized he had not said exactly what it was.
    “It’s a brain tumor,” said Jim. “Saphora, I’ll let you know about his treatment in the next day or so. I’ll keep you abreast of every detail.”
    Jim had so much warmth that Saphora teared up. She wiped the tears from her eyes.
    The rest of the afternoon was spent in the cancer center’s waiting room since Eddie could not sit at his grandfather’s side during the blood work. That was another thing Bender had not thought about. Saphora could not sit beside him. That is when it occurred to her that Bender might have orchestrated the whole afternoon so that she would be watching after Eddie while he and Jim talked about their golf games.
    She held back from crying this time. It was an acquired gift.

3
    It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
    A NTOINE DE S AINT -E XUPÉRY ,
La Petit Prince
    It was a clear day in spite of the hurricane warnings going out south of the Outer Banks. The wake was high, and the sheriff’s son had posted undertow warnings up and down the Oriental Marina. Bender asked Saphora to park at Tiny Beach. “I’d like to take a walk down to the marina before unpacking,” he told her as he got out of the car.
    Saphora said, “You want me to walk with you?”
    “Better stay with Eddie. He’d rather enjoy the sand.”
    Saphora frowned.
    “Go ahead. Why don’t you let Eddie out for a run.”
    Bender made Eddie sound like a little beagle.
    A beach run might give Eddie a release after being pent up during the more than three-hour drive from Raleigh. Eddie grabbed Saphora’s empty drink cup to use as a sand pail.
    Bender had already started his stroll down South Avenue by the time Saphora got Eddie aimed toward Tiny Beach. It was really a small patch of sand, not anything that could be called a beach. More like a sandlot on the water.
    She opened the car door and sat sideways behind the wheel. She could see Eddie well enough. She glanced toward Bender, who waswalking past the pretty little houses populated by artists and retirees, he said, who each had their own story about how they wound up living in Oriental.
    She did not move for the ten minutes it took Bender to become a quarter-inch blemish down South Avenue.
    Eddie was building a cup-shaped castle foundation. A sea gull landed next to him. Sometimes children fed the sea gulls, enabling the birds and turning them into a nuisance for the tourists. Eddie filled the cup with sand and held it out to the bird, but as the sea gull hopped within a few feet, he hurled sand at it. The air was salted with spiraling feathers as the bird lifted, screeching.
    Bender merged into a herd of couples taking sunset strolls. He walked as if he were not sick at all, taking long purposeful strides, and then disappeared.
    The Neuse River was a body of brackish water lapping against the rock and brown sand beaches, spilling into the ocean where the town of Minnesott Beach took up. Because of the natural harbors and inland banks and the lack of tidal action from the ocean, Oriental was called the sailing capital of North Carolina. A regatta floated down the Neuse, the lead craft manned by teen boys shouting back and forth to keep their sailing rig ahead of the remaining twelve crafts in