They walked, passing the large rocks, until they got closer to where the waves met the mountain. It was low tide, and the sand was pitted with dozens of tide pools. The pools were filled with sea stars glowing with orange and purple. Sea urchins, oozing water, opened their tentacled mouths as Larry and Aspire passed.
“This is close enough,” Aspire said, though the ocean was still a distance away. There was a jumble of massive rocks along the side of the cliff, and Larry could see bleached driftwood caught high on the cliff face, which was red and wet and crumbling.
It was oddly quiet here, as if the wind had captured a pocket next to the stone walls of the cliff.
“My dad used to come here,” Aspire said. “Sometimes elk fall, and he would find their bodies, hung up on the rocks. He cut up their antlers and sold them as dog chews in the city. My dad spent a lot of time outside.”
“What happened to him?” Larry asked.
She pointed, far above them, to where the rocky point of the mountain jutted over the sea.
“He came here and jumped. They never found his body either.”
“I’m sorry,” Larry said.
“I used to come down here and talk to him. But he never answered.”
“It must have been hard on your mother,” Larry said.
Aspire kicked at a strand of seaweed coiled on the beach. A little crab raced out from under it and dived into a tide pool.
“I think she was relieved, honestly.”
Larry had no reply to that.
“We had better go,” she said. “The tide is coming in.”
They turned around. The wind plastered their jackets against their backs.
Aspire cast a careful look at the waves behind them, as if to make sure they weren’t catching up. She and Larry climbed the final rocks to the car. It started with a sputter.
Aspire carefully backed the car up, then turned around.
“I wish I didn’t live here. Sometimes I think that. But then I’d have to leave my dad there, in the sea. I’d have to leave my mom and the market.”
“You could always come home for visits.”
“Yeah. But it isn’t the same then, is it?”
“No,” Larry said. “It is not.”
Back in his cabin, Larry paced in a circle by the fireplace, restless. Finally, he pulled out his copy of the local telephone directory. He found the number for the nursing home. The cook answered—the front desk was on break.
“Yes?”
Larry gave a little preamble he’d rehearsed. He was learning to add in the niceties people expected, instead of just barking into the phone.
The woman sounded amused.
“How can I help you?”
“You said boys ran away. The constable denies it ever happened,” Larry said. “Who did the center call, when a child went missing?”
“The social workers.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
“The policy was if anything happened with one of the boys, the director was supposed to call their caseworker.”
