By the time I turned seventy, I had learned that peace was not a luxury. It was a necessity, and often a hard-won one. People talk about retirement as if it is a reward waiting at the finish line, a soft place where life finally stops demanding so much. That had not been my experience. My husband died at sixty-one. I spent the next several years learning how to exist inside a house that still held the shape of him. His slippers by the door. His handwriting in old recipe books. His jackets hanging at the back of the closet because for months I could not bear to move them. The beach house had been my answer to grief.