The ocean never stops talking. That's what Claire Harper thinks as she stands on the pebbled shore of their small Oregon town, the wind tugging at her scarf like a restless child. It's late summer, the kind of day where the sky blurs into the sea, gray bleeding into gray, and the waves roll in with a rhythm that feels older than time. She's twenty-eight, newly married, and six months pregnant, her hands cradling the swell of her belly where Ethan—named already, a promise—kicks against her ribs. Beside her, Daniel squints into the horizon, his carpenter's hands shoved deep in his pockets, his silence a comfort she's come to love.