Deadline (Sandra Brown)

on her way to the car. She looked at Amelia, then at the porch light, then back to Amelia. “I didn’t. The bulb just must have been loose. I guess it came back on by itself.”
    After she drove away, Amelia remained standing on the threshold, one hand on the door jamb, the other on her chest where her heart had begun beating hard and fast. The lightbulb hadn’t been loose. It hadn’t come back on by itself. Because when Amelia noticed that it had burned out, she had removed it from the fixture.
    *  *  *
     
    As if the lightbulb and beach-ball puzzles weren’t enough to fray her nerves, she was upset over her missing wristwatch. In the utility room, she upended her beach bag and went through the contents item by item. She checked the windowsill above the kitchen sink where she sometimes placed it before doing the dishes. She even put her hand down the garbage disposal.
    Upstairs, she thoroughly searched her bathroom, bedroom, and dirty-clothes hamper. The hamper yielded a piece of Lego, but nothing else that didn’t belong there.
    Sitting on the side of her bed, she reconstructed her morning. She distinctly remembered pulling on her swimsuit, slipping the caftan over her head, then fastening her watch onto her wrist as she slid her feet into a pair of flip-flops.
    It had to have come off somewhere on the beach.
    She checked on the boys, who were sleeping soundly in their twin beds, then went back downstairs, got a flashlight, and switched it on as she descended the front steps.
    The boardwalk that connected the house to the beach was only two feet wide. The planks were old and weathered. Fearing splinters, she didn’t allow the boys to walk on it with bare feet, although the soles of her own feet had been toughened on these same planks every summer for as far back as she could remember. Back to when her mother was in the kitchen humming under her breath as she peeled fresh peaches for the cobbler she would bake. Back to when her father had warned her from his rocking chair on the verandah to be on the lookout for jellyfish.
    The saw grass on the dunes rustled in the breeze. The moon was still rising, but even if it had been high in the sky, it wouldn’t have shed much light. It was a narrow crescent, what her father used to call a “fingernail moon.”
    The tide of nostalgia and homesickness that assailed her was far stronger than the gentle surf. The lacy foam left on the sand when the soft waves receded sparkled in the beam of her flashlight. She walked along the packed sand, searching for a glint of gold, that precious, tangible connection to her father.
    Using the house as a reference point, she made a U-turn and started back the other way, going a little farther up the beach where the sand was drier. She repeated that slow, zigzagging route, moving a little farther away from the shore on each lap. Eventually she acknowledged the futility of the search. If the watch had been lost on the beach, it had probably been washed out to sea with the ebbing tide.
    Nevertheless, she searched more carefully around the area where they’d set up camp that day, even dropping to her knees at the spot where she’d staked the umbrella. She sifted handfuls of sand through her fingers.
    Finally, she sat back on her heels and despondently rubbed her hand over her bare wrist. Of all the things to lose, why that? Her mother had always said that tears should never be wasted on inanimate objects. Still, the watch had held enormous sentimental value for her, and while she could buy another, that particular one was irreplaceable.
    Sighing with regret, she looked out across the water, then up at the moon. She missed her mother, but that was a familiar ache because she’d been gone for a long time. The loss of her father, however, remained an open wound.
    In that moment, she felt very lonely.
    But not alone.
    Gripped by a sudden and inexplicable fear, she turned quickly to look behind her. Seasonal residents and tourists usually cleared out by Labor Day, so all the other houses along the stretch of beach, her neighbor Bernie’s included, were dark. No campfires flickered. There was one boat anchored offshore, but at a distance, and only its safety lights were on. The breeze didn’t carry any sounds of merrymaking.
    Yet, she sensed she wasn’t alone. And it was that, not the balmy wind that raised goose bumps on her arms. Grateful for the flashlight, she got to her feet and started up the boardwalk, moving swiftly, so that