“Nope. Too far down the beach, and hidden by the dunes. They change shape, you know. The dunes.”
“How so?” Amanda looked out the window.
“Sometimes, like now, they’re low. Then you look out your window the next morning, and they’ve grown. Some years, they’re hard to climb. Others, you can practically walk to the beach without lifting your legs.”
He had dark brown eyes and a narrow, sun-speckled skull. She was curious about him.
“Have you lived here all this time?”
“Got a room behind the office. Do all my own repairs.”
“Are you ever lonely?”
“Why should I be?” He grinned. “I got my hotel. I like to watch the ocean. It’s surprising what you see, if you look long enough.”
“What do you see?”
“All sorts of things, miss.”
He stopped smiling. He was looking intently at her.
Amanda took her room key.
“Enjoy your stay.”
Larry made French toast, with the thickly cut home-cured bacon Gertrude sold at the market. It was peppery and delicious. Amanda demolished hers but didn’t eat the end pieces. Larry had noticed she didn’t finish the ends of anything. Her plates were always littered with corners and triangles.
“That was delicious,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Now,” he said, picking up his notepad. “I thought we could make a list. What do we know and what do we need to learn?”
“Ralph’s last name,” she said.
“Good idea. He would know about the runaways too.”
He wrote,Find Ralph.
“Dennis might have had friends. Maybe we can find another boy who was at the center?” Amanda asked.
“That might be hard,” he said. “Because of the laws.”
He wrote it anyway.Friends.
“What about other people who worked there? Not just the cook.”
Other staff, he wrote.
He thought of Martha King. “You ever hear from that director?”
“No. Nothing.”
He wrote,Martha King.
They finished their coffee, and Larry tidied up, with her help. He watched as she loaded his dishwasher, slowly, as if afraid to mess it up.
The publisher of theCoastal Heraldwas behind his counter, laying out the next edition on a white drafting table. Larry stopped to watch, fascinated. Dwight Bowman was doing it old-school, with grids for the articles. Each one was set carefully into place.
“Mr. Palmer,” he said, without looking up.
