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  “I know, Piper. I know.”

  “But now this. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t . . . or had . . . I don’t know.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lainey screamed.

  I looked at Lainey’s pain. All I’d wanted to do was fix things for her, find her brother for her. And now . . .

  She ran toward the water, kicking at the edge of the waves, looking down, and hollering his name with such panic that I felt dizzy. She picked up his tiny truck, still in the puddle, and clasped it so tightly it disappeared inside her fist.

  “He was right there, digging that hole.” I pointed to the hole. “Just digging. I was playing with Daisy. We thought he was hiding . . .” I kept saying the same thing over and over, the same ridiculous thing. He was right there.

  Well, he obviously wasn’t now. He was not right there at all. He was gone.

  Soon, small groups were formed as more people showed up. Fletch’s friends, more police and a few neighbors. They divided into three groups. One headed up to check the roads; one went north on the beach and one went south.

  When the police didn’t have anything else to ask me, and I felt I couldn’t cry for one more second and the world was caving inward, sucking me down, I started to run north on the beach, calling George’s name over and over. Fletch caught up with me and grabbed my hand.

  “Slow down,” he said. “You can’t find him if you aren’t looking carefully. I’m here with you. Slow down.”

  We paced the beach together and the only thing we said was George’s name, over and over. We peered behind trash cans and ramshackle cottages. We knocked on doors, and every hundred yards or so I would drop to my knees in the sand, weak with the unknowing.

  “What if . . .”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Just don’t.”

  “This place, it’s cursed,” I said. “We should have never come here. Ever. My mom is crazy thinking she could come back to some beach town and everyone would just be happy again.”

  “Stop, Piper. Stop. He’s fine.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He lifted me from sitting and took me in his arms. “I don’t know that, you’re right, but I bet he’s hiding or he went to find something he wanted. He didn’t just disappear like Mrs. McKay.”

  “I won’t let George be some legend here like her, Fletch. I can’t. Because that would mean I’m part of a terrible story that will never stop being told. I can’t have that. I won’t. We have to find him.”

  “We will,” he said. “Someone will.”

  I checked my phone every two minutes and called Mom every five to beg for news. Hours passed and the town was on the hunt, knocking on doors and searching in corners and boats and small hideaways. A hub was set up at the bookshop, Mom told me. Mimi was coordinating with the police and gathering the town to help.

  I would not go back until he was found. I would not return to see Lainey and Daisy in their shattered pain. I would not face Mimi, who had believed that I could become who I wanted to become. I would not face Mom and what I’d done to disappoint her and how I’d betrayed her with Owen. I would not return at all, ever, if George wasn’t found.

  We walked for miles, maybe three, before I stopped Fletch. “He can’t have gone this far. He’s six years old.”

  “He might have. Hell, once when I was a kid, I followed a hobbled pelican along the beach for miles until my parents found me and dragged me home screaming that I needed to take it to the vet. Kids do this all the time.”

  “Oh, God, he’s got to be so scared. Wherever he is, he’s scared out of his mind. He has no idea where he is or if we’ll find him or . . .”

  “George!” Fletch hollered again and we continued our search, inch by inch, up the beach and through the grasses. We had hit the edge of the nature preserve, the area where we delivered groceries to Ms. Loretta and Mr. Seaton, and where we’d kissed in the waves.

  “Let’s go ask Ms. Loretta if she’s seen anything,” he said. “And you need some water.”

  We’d been searching and calling for hours, and my skin was pink and raw with sunburn, my lips chapped with heat. I didn’t care; I deserved it. I’d taken off my flip-flops before I noticed George was missing, and my feet were now blistered. Thin lines of blood told of stickers that had scraped across my ankles and calves. We stumbled through the pathway toward Loretta’s house a block away, and the tears started to rise again. I glanced again at my phone, but there was nothing there, nothing but stupid Instagram and Facebook notifications, which seemed an abomination compared to what I really needed, what I really wanted, to all that was important in the world. I was above all disgusted with myself, with ever caring about the things that now clogged my phone.

  I held fast to Fletch’s hand and hollered George’s name one more time.

  chapter 29

  LAINEY MCKAY

  “George!”

  I ran down the beach, tearing through the sand dunes and screaming my son’s name. The police tried to pull me back, tell me that there would be a coordinated effort and he would be found. I needed to stay calm. But I can tell you that there is no one in the history of the world who has been told to calm down who has calmed down.

  My God, if I hadn’t been researching a ticket to Texas, and instead had been watching my children, this would not be happening. I’d created this. I’d betrayed my children and myself. In my own pain I’d turned to the sick obsession one more time, like an alcoholic to his drink, like my mother to her pills. When Tim discovered why I wasn’t with our children, it would be the last of us, the last of his belief in me. My enslavement to this idea of finding my mother had wreaked its final injury—the loss of all that mattered.

  Piper had called four or five times and I’d ignored the calls—I’d thought she probably wanted some extra juice boxes or sunscreen—for my own preoccupation with a feverish need to find what was long gone. What if those minutes had made a difference? What if in needing to find my mother I’d lost my son?

  “George!” I screamed again as the policeman tried to grab my arm, slow me down. I shook loose of him. “My six-year-old son is missing,” I screamed. “And out there is an ocean. An ocean!”

  The blue-uniformed man released me as I ran across the beach. And then I stopped—what if George had run the other way? I turned to bolt that way, then found myself frozen in the middle, weeping. Going one way meant giving up on the other way. He’d disappeared. How could this happen twice? My son. My mother.

  I was thirteen years old and we’d all been downtown for the Labor Day parade—last day of summer. Mom had carried a little flask in her purse; she always did. We’d put it in our notebook: a clue to my parents’ misery. Even as we knew what was wrong with her, we wrote about it like clues over which we had some control. There was never control.

  She drank all afternoon, her swinging hips and sultry speech magnified. My cheeks and Bonny’s were sticky with cotton candy and our shoulders sunburned from the afternoon carnival outside without protection. Owen, at fifteen years old, was the first one to say, “Mom, maybe we should go home.”

  Of course she should go home; she was almost too drunk to walk. But this was when she was the happiest—when she was the drunkest. Her smile returned. Her laughter echoed across the fairgrounds. She held Dad’s hand and hugged us close. Then Dad chimed in. “Clara, we must get you home before you do something embarrassing.”

  And that was when it fell apart for the final time.

  She started crying. She usually did when Dad attacked her like that in public. Then she grabbed our hands—Owen’s and mine. Mrs. Moreland pulled Bonny close to her. And off Owen and I went into the evening with Mom while Dad went to find the car.

  He never found the car because Mom got there first, with Owen and me in tow.

  “George.” My voice broke and I ran toward the water, splashing along the high tide, lo
oking for something, anything to give me an indication of which way he’d gone. The Matchbox truck dug into my palm like a talisman, a charm that would bring him back to me. I looked left and right and closed my eyes. Which way did you go? Where were you going?

  He didn’t answer and I bolted north on the beach, splashing through the high tide that was only an inch deep in water. He was prone to follow things, or to set a goal and forget where he was and why. He’d look for a single thing and forget all else. A shell. A horseshoe crab carcass. A severed crab leg. Who knew what he’d get in his head and go in search of with pure desire? I ran, screaming.

  Mom’s disappearance merged with George’s, and I felt both of them, stumbling along the same beach the police had that night so long ago.

  Mom put Owen in the front seat and I climbed, scared but glad to be with her, into the backseat. The day fought to stay, holding on to the light for the last few hours of summer. The pungent odor of smoke, teenagers with tightly rolled joints, wafted from behind the festival tents. Watersend felt an edginess that couldn’t be named. This night felt different. More desperate. Everyone was grabbing at something—a beer; a joint; a girl; a boy; anything at all.

  “Mom, let me drive,” Owen said in his grown-up voice.

  “That’s silly.” She laughed so beautifully, as if all the world was hers and she knew it. “I’m not letting my kids take care of me. I’m here to take care of my kids.” She started the car and turned on the radio.

  The song was “Just the Way You Are” by Billy Joel. She turned it all the way up and sang it at the top of her lungs like a wish, or a dream. We were rounding the corner to home when a dog ran into the road. It wasn’t her fault, I’d said my entire life. The dog ran out into the road.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  “Mrs. McKay!” a strange voice called and I turned, frantic.

  “Stop,” the young policeman said. “Your daughter needs you right now and we will search. The entire town is coming out to help.”

  Daisy.

  Daisy.

  I ran to her where she stood next to the policeman. I scooped her into my arms and held her so tightly that she squealed. “Ow, Mom.”

  “Where’s Piper?” I asked, looking around, livid that she’d left Daisy alone. Had she been drunk, too?

  No, that was Mom. This was Piper and it was eight in the morning.

  “She is looking for your son with Fletch. They took off that way,” the policeman said. He pointed north where I’d been going. “Ma’am, Mrs. Blankenship said there are headquarters for searching already setting up at the bookshop in town. You need to go there where things can be coordinated. We will find him.”

  That was what they’d said when Mom was gone: We will find her. Trust us.

  The dog was a black mutt mix and the thump under the tires was so grotesque that we all screamed as one. Mom jerked the steering wheel and the light pole appeared. I could have sworn it wasn’t there before—it just showed up when Mom turned the wheel too late.

  The car lurched and slammed with a sickening crunch. I flew forward and slammed into the back of Owen’s seat. He did the same, but into the dashboard with his arms held out. Mom, she slumped forward, limp like she’d just gone to sleep sitting up.

  Owen howled in pain and then opened his car door, fell out onto the soft dirt. I slowly lifted myself out of the car: I was fine, but my head hurt where I’d hit the seat. But nothing about me mattered. I, too, landed in the dirt and then crawled to Owen. “Are you okay?”

  But he didn’t need to answer because I could see that his arm shot out at the wrong angle and a small knob of white bone poked through the skin near his wrist. I turned away and puked into the thick grass.

  Steam started to come from the hood of the car and Owen stood, rushed to Mom’s side and opened her car door with his left hand, while his right dangled sick and bleeding.

  “Mom!” I hollered out, wiping the spit from my mouth and crawling to the other side of the car.

  The police were right; the bookshop was abuzz. I held tightly to Daisy and said, “What can I do right now?” to a policeman standing at the door.

  Mimi came to me and held me so close. “Sit. I will get you something to eat and drink.”

  It was then that I realized I was still in my pajamas—drawstring pants and a tank top. My feet were bare. I’d driven Daisy and me here without thinking, like a drunkard just wanting to get home before he’s caught. “Call my brother,” I said. And I rattled off his cell number. “Call him, please. I know he’s in town, but I don’t know where he’s staying.”

  “I will,” she said. “Lainey, we will find George.”

  “I’ve heard that promise before, Mimi. I’ve heard that before.”

  “This is different,” Mimi said, and she placed her hand on Daisy’s head. “George wants to be found.”

  She set me in a back room with water and toys for Daisy. She brought me a Title Wave T-shirt to slide over my tank top and held me close. “We will find him.”

  I needed to tell Tim. I needed to find George. I couldn’t leave Daisy. My heart and my mind ricocheted like bullets with nowhere to kill. I didn’t want to call Tim until they found our son, until I could say, “You just wouldn’t believe what happened today.” I didn’t want to call him until it was over, until the good part started, until we found him.

  But that wasn’t fair, and I was jealous of Tim—I was jealous of the hour he hadn’t known George was gone. The peaceful hour he’d had that I’d lost. The hour of unknowing.

  I lifted my cell phone and pushed the button with his name.

  Owen and I pulled Mom out of the car and onto the grass, where she groggily woke up. “What?” She sat, rubbing at her temples and then at the bump already forming on her forehead, a purple mass near her left eye. Her sunglasses were shattered and hanging crooked from one ear. Owen took them off.

  I remembered the thump, the dog, and I bolted to the street, leaving Owen with Mom. He was whimpering—this little black dog with curly hair and big brown eyes looking at me for help. His back legs were bent, like Owen’s arm, at the wrong angle, but he was trying to crawl forward with his front legs, trying to get out of the road.

  A station wagon, much like ours, turned the corner then and I grabbed the dog and ran from the street to the side of the road. I stood next to our steaming car and Mom whimpered and Owen groaned. The other car slammed on its brakes; the smell of burned rubber filled the air. A man, tall and loud, ran to our side.

  A second car then arrived, and it was the young woman in that car who went for help while the man stayed with us. I held the dog and Owen held Mom and the world slipped away from me in small increments of terror.

  Tim answered on the first ring. “Hello, sweetie. It’s awful early here. Tell me you’re calling to say you’re on your way home because you missed me so desperately.”

  “No.”

  “What is it?” He was fully awake now. I could tell.

  “George ran off on the beach. We can’t find him. The whole town is out now looking.” I stated the facts as if they were devoid of anything that had to do with me, or us, or our life.

  “Is this some sick joke?”

  I handed Daisy the book that Mimi had put out for her, Winnie-the-Pooh, and pulled her closer on my lap. “No.”

  “Oh, my God, Lainey. What happened? Where is he?”

  “He was on the beach digging a hole and then he was just gone. Like he does.”

  “What were you doing?”

  This was the moment when I could lie. I could tell him that I was asleep or working at my art. I could tell him that Piper was lazy and hadn’t done her job. But the world was unraveling and my lies would only spiral us downward into a deeper hell. “I was on the computer.”

  “What?”

  “I asked Piper to take them to the beach so I could book
a flight to Texas.”

  His voice changed. “I’m on my way.”

  Silence filled with the sound of rain there in Petaluma where my love was in his bed. I should have been there, with my children asleep in the next room. This trip was a colossal mistake on every front.

  The ambulance roared away, screaming its siren call with Mom and Owen sharing the back of it on two stretchers. Bonny’s parents arrived and hustled me into their car. The man in the station wagon wrapped up the little dog and promised to go straight to the vet. We returned to Sea La Vie, where I wept with hiccuping sobs until Dad walked into the house with Owen, who wore a white cast, like a stick of chalk, on his right arm and a dazed expression I’d never seen. He came straight to me and hugged me. Dad stood by with a set expression of such anger that even later in life when I imagined him, I saw that face.

  “I have to go bail Clara out of jail,” he said to Mrs. Moreland. “Please watch the kids.”

  “I’ve got it,” Mrs. Moreland said, already moving toward the kitchen where she would bake something: her cure for all ills.

  “Jail?” I jumped and ran to Dad. “Mom is in jail?”

  Dad touched the small cut above my right eye. “Yes. She drove drunk. She hit a dog and an electric pole and broke her son’s arm. Yes, she is in jail.”

  The sun had set by then, and the night was thick upon us. I couldn’t bear to think of her locked in a cell alone. All alone.

  “Go get her,” I wailed. “Now.”

  “I am.”

  “The dog,” I asked. “Where is the dog?”