when she felt the touch of a hand on her shoulder. It was Andrew.
“He’s going to be okay,” he said. “Remember that Fourth of July?”
She wanted to scream. That was only 411 seconds. They had now been looking for him for almost twenty minutes, and that was after the fifteen-minute drive from the golf course. They had checked all the obvious places: the hotel lobby, swimming pool, gift shop, surf store—everywhere. So far, they had found a few people who remembered seeing Johnny with Kara and his sisters, as well as in the water with his skim board, but that would have been before he went to get ice cream at the beach shack.
“I can’t believe Johnny was with some girl none of us had ever met before. What was she so busy doing that she couldn’t keep an eye on our son?”
“Kara and Ashley both feel terrible.”
“Good!”
Her tone was bitter, but in truth, the person she was angry at was herself. She never should have left the hotel.
“An employee at the beach shack says he saw Johnny collecting seashells behind the shack a little while after they ordered their ice cream cones. He may have walked farther down the beach to collect more.”
“For over half an hour?”
“It’s a long beach. You know how focused he can be.”
“I also know he would never wander off alone this long.” Marcy had felt an immediate connection to Johnny when the nun at the hospital had placed him in her arms, like energy radiating directly from his tiny body into hers. She may not have had the experience of nine months of carrying him, but in that single moment, the two of them became bonded forever.
A woman was heading toward them from the hotel. Her maxi dress blew like a sail with the wind. She was carrying a camera and a cigarette, just as she had been when Marcy spotted her earlier that day.
“Excuse me. Ma’am, pardon me,” Marcy shouted. Andrew followed her as she charged through the sand toward the stranger.
Up close, Marcy could see that the woman was older than she had assumed—probably approaching sixty, with long gray-and-blond hair and skin etched by sun and smoking. She had a warm, welcoming smile.
“Well, hello.” She bent down and put her cigarette out in the sand. “Not like most people here to introduce themselves to strangers, especially in the summer.”
“I’m sorry. We’re staying at the hotel, and we can’t find our son.” Marcy held up the screen of her phone. Her voice caught at the sight of the image—a photograph of Johnny, all cheeks and a toothy grin as he held up his certificate for winning second place in the first-grade puzzling contest last April. “I saw you taking photographs earlier on the beach. Did you see him playing?”
The woman’s smile immediately fell. “I’m so sorry. I don’t recognize him. When I’m behind the camera, I focus on the natural beauty of the topography. Human beings don’t even exist in my mind when I’m looking through a lens.”
“Is it possible you have pictures that might show where he went?” Andrew asked.
“I can certainly check.” She switched her camera into display mode. Marcy and Andrew looked over her shoulder as she flipped through the digital images.
“There!” Marcy exclaimed. She pointed to the far-right edge of the screen. “That’s Johnny on his skim board.”
“Oh sure, I remember seeing a boy out there earlier today. I actually shifted my position to make sure I was getting a pure landscape.” She checked the time stamp of the photograph. It was not long after they had left for the golf course, so it didn’t provide any information beyond what they had gathered from Kara and Ashley.
The photographer waited patiently while they scrolled through the rest of her pictures, desperately searching for some clue of Johnny’s whereabouts. Andrew was writing down her name and number just in case they needed to reach her again, when Marcy saw the photographer’s facial expression shift again, this time to fear.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing toward the water. An object had washed up to shore with the waves.
Marcy felt her stomach tighten as she recognized the turquoise and white stripes from one of the photographs Kara had texted to Laurie while they were on the golf course. It was the skim board Johnny had been using. Her son was gone and he could be anywhere, even in the water.
The waves seemed to grow louder as she broke into sobs.
Chapter 6
Laurie plugged one ear