That morning it had started out freezing, and they’d barely walked at all. Mom spent the morning near the bottom of the walkway over the dunes, huddled in a blanket, wearing dark glasses and holding a book. Midafternoon she went back inside, telling Madison it was all right for her to stay out but she had to remain within forty yards of the cottage.
This was okay for a while, even kind of fun to have the beach to herself. She didn’t go into the sea. Though she’d enjoyed this in the past, for the last couple of years she had found herself slightly wary of large bodies of water, even when it wasn’t this cold. She built and refined a castle instead, which was fun. She dug as deep a hole as she could.
But when it got close to five o’clock, her feet started itching. She stood up, sat down. Played a little longer, though the game was getting old. It was bad enough skipping the walk in the morning, but not doing it now was really weird. The walking was important. It must be. Or why else did they always do it?
In the end she walked down to the surf alone and stood irresolute for a few moments. The beach remained deserted in both directions, the sky low and heavy and gray and the air getting cool. She waited as the first strong breeze came running ahead of the storm, worrying at the leg of her shorts and buzzing it against her leg. She waited, looking up at the dunes at the point where they hid the cottage, just over the other side.
Her mother did not appear.
She started slowly. She walked forty yards to the right, using the length of a big stride as a rough guide. It felt strange. She immediately turned around and walked back to where she’d started, and then another forty yards. This double length almost felt like walking, nearly reached the point where you forgot you were supposed to be going anywhere—because you weren’t—and instead it became just the wet rustle of waves in your ears and the blur of your feet swishing in and out of view as your eyes picked over shapes and colors between the curling water and the hard, wet sand.
And so she did it again, and again. Kept doing it until the two turning points were just like odd, curved steps. Trying to make the waves sound like they always had. Trying not to imagine where they would eat tonight, and how little they would talk. Trying not to…
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.