SHARK REEF

My husband and I moved to Lopez full time in July, 1994. Two months later, we stood under a warm, September sun, staining endless boards of pale cedar a rusty red-brown.

Plans for a March vacation in Mexico, and the recognition that my 10-year-old bathing suit is well past its prime, compelled me to go shopping for a new swimsuit. In the middle of January. This is a shopping trip I’ve never enjoyed, even when I was thirty years younger and weighed twenty-five pounds less.