My eyes fly open.
The boys have abandoned their China excavation and are now forty yards down the beach, shovels flying, a different hole taking shape with alarming speed.
And walking back from the water's edge, carrying a water bottle—dark hair with silver at the temples, arms crossed even while walking—is Paul.
Paul is on the beach. On a walk. Like a normal person. And my son and Lottie's sons have found him the way heat-seeking missiles find their targets.
“Mr. Paul! Thehole is ready! You promised!”
That's Aidan. My son. Yelling across a public beach at the grumpiest man in Twin Waves.
And Paul—I watch this in real time—looks at the hole. Looks at the three boys standing around it like surgeons around an operating table. Looks at the ocean like he's considering walking into it and never coming back.
Then he gets in the hole.
Paul Spencer, owner of Harold's Marina, who folds his dock lines in identical coils and once lectured me for eleven minutes about the proper amperage for a marine refrigeration unit, sits down in a hole dug by three eight-year-olds on a public beach.
I am not going over there. I am going to watch from a safe distance because this is the most entertaining thing I've seen since Lottie told Justin to net some more.
The boys go to work. Sand flies. Paul disappears by degrees. First his legs. Then his waist. Then his chest. Mitch pats sand around his shoulders with the firm competence of a kid who has buried many adults and takes pride in his craft.
Within ten minutes, Paul Spencer is buried up to his chin.
His head is just—sitting there. On the sand. Like a grumpy coconut. His dark hair is catching the windand his jaw is doing its usual thing and he is completely, totally immobilized.
And he's not fighting it.
I get up. I can't help it.
I walk over trying to look casual, like I'm just strolling, not drawn by the gravitational pull of a buried grumpy man. The boys spot me first.
“Mom! We buried Mr. Paul!”
“I can see that.”
Paul's eyes find mine. From ground level. His entire body is under sand and his chin is resting on the beach like a man quietly accepting the consequences of his choices.
“Go ahead,” he says. “Get it out of your system.”
“I haven't said a word.”
“You don't have to. Your whole face is composing a speech.”
He's not wrong. I'm holding back laughter so hard my ribs ache.
“How did this happen?” I manage.
“They asked.”
“They asked you to get in a hole.”
“They said it was for a sand castle. I was going to help them dig. Then the scope changed.”
Olson is smoothing the sand around Paul's neckwith the precision of a sculptor. “He's really good at being buried. He doesn't wiggle.”
“Wiggling would compromise the structural integrity.”
“See?” Olson pats his shoulder area. “He gets it.”
