My leather combat boots were crusted with pale, dry sand from the Sandbridge Beach dunes.

“Are you taking those off out here, Mom?” Matty asked, dropping his blue bag by the screen door.

“I’m not tracking half the Atlantic coast into the house,” I said.

I unlaced the heavy black leather, working the laces loose through the brass eyelets one at a time down to the ankle.

The soles had cost forty-two dollars to replace back in August, but that thick rubber tread had kept my footing on the wet dune slope that morning.

Matty sat on the step below me and watched me pull off the right boot and turn it upside down over the flower bed.