Then she stopped. Slowly she bent down, hand outstretched. She picked something out of the collage of seaweed, driftwood fragments, battered homes of dead sea dwellers. Held it up to her face, scarcely believing.
She had found an almost-complete sand dollar.
It was small, admittedly, not much bigger than a quarter. It had a couple of dings around the edges. It was a dirtier gray than most, and stained green on one side. But it would count. Would have counted, that is, if things were counting as normal. Things were not.
What should have been a moment of jubilation felt heavy and dull. She realized that the thing she held in her hand might as well be as big as a dinner plate and have no chips in it at all. It could be dry, sandy-golden, and perfect like the ones you saw for sale in stores. It wouldn’t matter.
Madison sat down suddenly and stared at the flat shell in her hand. She made a gentle fist around it, then looked out at the sea.
She was still sitting there ten minutes later when she heard a noise. A whapping sound, as if a large bird were flying up the tide line toward her, long black wings slowly beating. Madison turned her head.
A man was standing on the beach.
He was about thirty feet away. He was tall, and the noise was the sound of his black coat flapping in the cold winds from a storm now boiling across the sky like a purple-black second sea. The man was motionless, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his coat. What low light made its way through the cloud was behind him, and you could not see his face. Madison knew immediately that the man was looking at her, however. Why else would he be standing there, like a scarecrow made of shadows, dressed not for the beach but for church or the cemetery?
She glanced casually back over her shoulder, logging her position in relation to the cottage’s walkway. It was not directly behind, but it was close enough. She could get there quickly. Maybe that would be a good idea, especially as the big hand was at quarter to.
But instead she turned back and once more looked out at the dark and choppy ocean. It was a bad decision, partly caused by something as simple as the lack of a congratulatory clap on the shoulder when she’d found what she held in her hand, but she made the call, and in the end no one else was to blame.
The man waited a moment and then headed toward her. He walked in a straight line, seemingly unbothered by the water that hissed around his shoes, up and back. He crunched as he came. He was not looking for shells and did not care what happened to them.
Madison realized she’d been dumb. She should have moved right away, when she had a bigger advantage. Just got up, walked home. Now she’d have to rely on surprise, on the fact that the man was probably assuming that if she hadn’t run before, she wouldn’t now. Madison decided she would wait until the man got a little closer and then suddenly bolt, moving as fast as she could and shouting loud. Mom would have the door open. She might even be on her way out right now, looking to see why Maddy was not yet back. She should be—she was officially late. But Madison knew in her heart that her mother might just be sitting in her chair instead, shoulders rounded and bent, looking down at her hands the way she had after they came back from the restaurant the night before.
And so she got ready, making sure her heels were well planted in the hard sand, that her legs were tensed like springs, ready to push off with everything she had.
The man stopped.
Madison had intended to keep looking out at the waves until the last second, as if she wasn’t even aware of the man’s presence, but instead found herself turning her head a little to check what was going on.
The man had came to a halt earlier than Madison expected, still about twenty feet away. Now she could see his face, she could tell he was way older than her dad, maybe even past Uncle Brian’s age, which was fifty. Uncle Brian was always smiling, though, as if he were trying to remember a joke he’d heard at the office and was sure you were going to enjoy. This man did not look like that.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said. His voice was dry and quiet, but it carried.
Madison hurriedly looked away, heart thumping. Unthinkingly protecting the flat shell still in her left hand, she braced her right palm, too, into the sand now, ready to push off against it, hard.
“But first I need to know something,” he said.
Madison realized she had to reach maximum speed immediately. Uncle Brian was fat and looked like he couldn’t run at all. This man was different that way, too. She took a deep breath. Decided to do it on three. One…
“Look at me, girl.”
Two…
Then suddenly the man was between Madison and the dunes. He moved so quickly that Madison barely saw it happen.
“You’ll like it,” he said, as if he had done nothing at all. “I promise. You want it. But first you have to answer my question. Okay?”
His voice sounded wetter now, and Madison realized dismally just how stupid she’d been, understood why moms and dads said children had to be back at certain times, and to not stray too far, and not talk to strangers, and so many other things. Parents weren’t just being mean or difficult or boring, it turned out. They were trying to prevent what was about to happen.
She looked up at the man’s face, nodded. She didn’t know what else to do and hoped it might help. The man smiled. He had a spray of small, dark moles across one cheek. His teeth were stained and uneven.
“Good,” he said. He took another step toward her, and now his hands were out of his coat pockets. His fingers were long and pale.
Madison heard the word “Three…” in her head, but it was too quiet and she didn’t believe in it. Her arm and legs were no longer like springs. They felt like rubber. She couldn’t even tell if they were still tensed.
The man was too close now. He smelled damp. There was a strange light in his eyes, as if he’d found something he’d been looking for for a long time.
He squatted down close to her, and the smell suddenly got worse, an earthy odor on his breath, a smell that spoke of parts of the body normally kept hidden.
“Can you keep a secret?” he said.
chapter
FOUR
I got home around a quarter after nine in the evening. Apart from picking up milk and coffee, the trip had been make-work: Amy kept the cupboards well stocked. I’d walked into town from the house, which took twenty minutes. It was a pleasant stroll, and I’d have done it that way even if the car hadn’t been unavailable. I sat outside the coffee place and nursed an Americano while leafing through the local paper, learning several things: The trajectories of two cars had intersected a few nights before—nobody was hurt, not even a little bit; some local big shot got reelected to the school board for the twelfth straight year, which seemed borderline obsessional; and the Cascades Gallery needed a mature person to help sell paintings and sculptures of eagles and bears and Indian braves. Experience unnecessary, but candidates were instructed to bring a willingness to follow a dream. That didn’t sound like me, even if the writing project remained stalled. I hoped the gallery did find someone, however, and that the lucky winner was sufficiently mature. I hated to think of limited-edition art prints being sold in a juvenile manner.
I prowled the aisles of Sam’s Market for longer than necessary, picking items up and putting them back. Found a couple things too outre to have shown up on more enlightened shopping agendas, chiefly beers, and at the checkout I added a paperback Stephen King. I’d read it before, but most of my books were still in storage down in L.A., plus it was right there in front of me, in a rickety rack full of secondhand Dan Brown and triple-named romantic women done up in lurid gilt.
Back in the lot, I loaded the bag into my backpack and stood irresolute. A pickup truck sat ticking in the silence. I’d seen the owner inside, a local with craggy features and moss in his ears, and he’d ignored me in the way newcomers deserved. I’d made a point of saying hi, just to mess with his head. A couple emerged from Laverne’s Rib across the street, rolling as if on the deck of a ship. Laverne’s prided itself on the magnitude of its
