There were no crowds that early morning, no high-strung adults obsessing over lighting angles, no hidden cruelty waiting to spring.

There was only the low rhythm of the surf, and the sharp clean sea air, and my daughter, seventeen now, walking down to the water’s edge alone.

She wore a simple emerald-green halter top and denim shorts, and the deep-burgundy birthmarks across her shoulders and collarbone and right arm were bare to the ocean breeze.

For sixteen years those markings had felt to her like a sentence, a constellation of flaws to be scrubbed away or buried beneath heavy fabric.

Now, as the foam washed over her bare feet, she did not look down to check whether anyone was staring.