Larry was quiet, listening.
“He was still holding that poor kid’s shirt. It had his name on the back. That’s how we knew the boy was from Brightwood.”
“Did the boys from Brightwood usually go to the beach?”
“Hell no. They never let them out of their sight up there.” He yanked a smoke from the pack, put it between his thin lips, lit it, and inhaled deeply. He coughed, realized what he was doing, and started to put it out. He stopped, took another small drag, and then gently tapped it out.
“Jobs are scarce around here, particularly in the offseason, which is nine months out of the year,” he told them. “Not everyone wants to be a fisherman. Most of the kids here, they don’t want to anymore. It’s hard work, and the pay isn’t worth dying over. It used to be sometimes one of our people would go up to Brightwood and get a job. Most didn’t last more than a few weeks, maybe a few months, if they were wired that way.”
Larry took a long drink of his iced tea. Amanda followed suit, and the fisherman did, too, taking a big gulp. He toyed with his cigarettes.
“What did they say about it?” Amanda asked.
He started to say something, then reconsidered and said, “I don’t know, miss. I don’t know how you make any place like that good for children. But some of them tried.”
He looked embarrassed. He shoved the cigarette back in his mouth but didn’t light it.
“I saw the isolation rooms,” Amanda said.
“They would put the boys in them when they were bad. Problem is, you can’t be a child without being bad, especially not in a place like that.”
Amanda remembered the bedrooms, the marks from cots on the floors. The dining room.
“I met a woman once, she was the cook there,” he went on. “She said they fed the boys well. Lots of potatoes and pancakes and starches like that. So they ate,” he said, trying to make it better.
“That’s good to know,” Amanda said. She had tried to researchchild centers online but had found very little. Brightwood itself was a smooth stone of confidentiality.
“Anyhow, the constable interviewed that fella. Let him go. There was no reason not to. He looked awfully sick from the sea. By then we had formed search parties and were going up and down the beach. Just like we did for Sigrid, looking for remains. Never found her either.” He held the cigarette in his fingers, studying it. “A week or so later, I was in the market and Gertrude said, ‘Ain’t it a shame that no one ever came for that boy?’ Right then and there, we decided to make the stone. At least the sky could remember him.”
Amanda blinked back tears.
“Why did the center close?” Larry asked.
“No idea. Some said it was money.”
Larry suddenly leaned over, picked up the lighter, and lit the man’s cigarette. He leaned back, savoring the ring of smoke. The fisherman took a deep drag, then another.
That night, Amanda curled up in her sandy bed. The sky outside was very dark. No moon. She could hear the ocean, pounding. It sounded so close, and she could imagine the sneaker waves running far up the sand in the dark, searching for her.
She turned over, closed her eyes. She felt alone, but that was nothing new. Her whole life she had felt alone, and she wondered if that would always be true.
In the deep of the night, she slept. All along the coast was pure, unadulterated darkness. In the distance, everyone could feel the waves.
Into this darkness, one man crept. He walked along the hotel’s outer walls, his feet knowing the sand, feeling the rhythms of the sea. The ocean whispered to him. He stopped outside the windows of theroom where Amanda Dufresne slept. He stood there for a long time, just thinking in the wind.
He had never expected it to come back. It had been twenty years—why did it have to happen now?
He didn’t want to have to take action. But he would, if need be.
The past had to stay in the past.
Breathing deeply of the salty air, the man disappeared back into the dark.
6
That first summer was the summer of joy. Dennis and Ralph set up the video camera. It recorded for a few hours at night under the bushes, but the creature that lived there must have smelled the plastic, or sensed it, the custodian said, because the video did not show what lived down that hole.
But the waiting felt different to Dennis. The dirt scratched up by the hole was proof enough. The sun over the trees was proof enough. The world exploded with color, because he had a task now, and it was with Ralph.
