“I work at the Oregon Zoo. Today is my weekend.”
“What do you do there?”
“I work with the polar bear, Molly.”
“Really?” He was gratified. It seemed like a perfect job for her.
“Yes. I love it. I started working there when I was eighteen. Now I’m the lead keeper. Though I don’t like that word. I’m more like a paid friend to Molly.”
“I feel like I’ve heard of her.”
“There were a lot of articles when we got her.”
“I remember now. The world’s loneliest polar bear.”
“That’s what they call her.”
Amanda finished the muffin. The birds flew overhead. She folded the plastic wrap the muffin had come in into a tiny square and buried it deep in her pocket. She looked out at the ocean, her eyes dark.
“Maybe you could help me some more,” she said.
“Sure.”
“I was thinking about that center, Brightwood. Since I’m stuck here for a few hours, at least, maybe I could find it.”
“We’ll ask back at the market.”
“Why there?”
“It’s the place where everything happens here. Problem is, nothing happens here. I’ll go with you. But first, I’ve got to use the loo.”
She turned to look at the expanse of sharp seagrass tufting the low dunes around them.
“There’s one on the path back,” he said.
In the market, the teen girl was stocking rolls of toilet paper with rinds of dust on them. She wiped this on her jeans, making it look like she had been in a war with a million moths. She climbed down from her rickety step stool.
“I know about that place. Ma!”
Her mother appeared, a half shadow behind a kitchen door. Larry saw the shape of a spatula in her hand. He had never seen the woman, and had begun to suspect that she was severely introverted. Or depressed. As with much in the town, no one discussed it. At least not with him.
“Yes?” The voice behind the door was muted.
“They’re asking after that old kids’ home. Brightwood.”
“Who’s asking?”
“That old man. Sorry,” she said to Larry. “The one who was a cop. And a woman who got stuck here with the storm.”
“Joe should know better.”
“He can’t pick up trees before they fall.”
“No, you nitwit. I meant he should put up that sign we’ve been talking about forever. On the highway. At the turnoff.”
Her daughter sighed. She looked at her messy jeans. The subject of the sign was the source of a long-standing debate in the town of Eagle Cove. Some said visitors deserved a warning that they might get trapped in the town by falling trees. Others said Joe shouldn’t have to risk his life just to hang a sign that the dumb tourists would ignore anyhow. If they didn’t have the sense not to drive before a storm, they deserved whatever happened to them.
“I’d just like to know where it was,” Amanda called to the shape behind the kitchen door.
