Five Days in Summer

boy the braceletshe found, and then she disappeared. She found it on Monday when we were leaving for the Vineyard.”
    Will stopped walking.
    “A silver charm bracelet,” Marian said. “A heart, three babies, a swimmer, a sword, a cello, a coin.”
    Will remembered slipping the bracelet onto Emily’s wrist; she had just given birth to David and was fast asleep. He could still feel her rush of delight when she woke up and saw it for the first time: the heart, swimmer, sword, cello and one baby. Then, with each new milestone, each new child, another charm.
    “Daisy was showing this boy the bracelet,” Marian said. “And then she was gone.”
    “The clasp was broken, Will,” Sarah said, her voice rising. “It must have slipped off.”
    Will stepped close to Marian and held her shoulders. “The boy, what did he look like?”
    “Ten, eleven years old,” Marian said. “He looked like you.”
    Will was in the grip of understanding that Marian had just seen David, alive, when the front door of the station house swung open and footsteps clapped on the hard floor.
    “Will!”
    The snap of his own name pulled his gaze away from Marian, and for a split second he saw his mother standing ten feet away. It had been such a long, long time, and he missed her so very badly. Yearning rushed into his heart and his brain and his muscles and he felt her, saw her: her eyes exhausted against the white hospital pillow. Pale blue water emptying.
    “Always trust yourself,” she had said. “And remember, my sweetheart, that Mommy will never stop loving you.”
    And her eyes closing and her fingers falling open around his small hand.
    His birthday, the very next day, without her.
    He remembered.
    “Will honey.” Caroline rushed to him in her red sundress and wrapped him up in her arms. Like their mother, she had never lost her willowy body, and her skin was softer than soft. Comfortable, he had called it as a child; against his mother’s skin had been the nicest place to be.
    “We saw the news,” Caro said. “We flew right back.”
    Will pressed his face into Caroline’s short hair and smelled her summery perfume. Her husband, Harry, sat down next to Sarah and put his arm around her shoulders. Maxi was just now waking up.
    Will whispered into Caro’s neck: “The bastard’s got Sammie.” He pulled away and looked into his sister’s endless, amber eyes, framed in lines of wisdom and love and memory. Then he turned back to Marian. “Where did Daisy find the bracelet?”
    Ted stepped forward. “Come with me. I’ll take you.”

Chapter 32
    Grass fell onto sand and sand fell into water. Stretched out into the bay was a splintery dock that looked like it might fall apart right then and there with its crooked legs pegged in wet sand. Only the end of the dock was in the water. That meant the tide was out. David knew about the tides, how they flowed in and out on schedule with the moon and the sun. At the ocean beach in the morning the sand was soaked through and ready for castling, foot digging, racing into the waves. Then at the end of the afternoon on the beach the water tried to steal your towel and it was time to go.
    A white boat with a faded blue name and two white seats behind a windshield bobbed at the end of the dock.
    “There.” Daisy pointed straight ahead. “I found it right there.”
    “On the dock?”
    “Give me my seven dollars and sixty-two cents, please .”
    “First show me exactly where.”
    “Oh look .”
    Daisy wasn’t interested in the dock or the bay or the boat anymore. She had seen something better: thehigh flat nose of an ice-cream truck parked right there in the bramble.
    She took off and ran toward it and David followed.
    “Come back!”
    “We gotta check this out!” She sounded happy. Dumb kid. Didn’t she understand there wasn’t time for games?
    He reached her at the truck; it was bashed in at one side and rusted out. She was trying to pull open the caved-in door and he grabbed at the waist of her shorts to yank her down.
    “Hey!” She got up and ran to the other side of the truck, laughing.
    David ran after her. “Daisy, show me where you found the bracelet.”
    “You can’t catch me!” She took off around the nose of the truck.
    But he was older and bigger and faster and he could catch her, easy. He grabbed her with both arms and stopped her short.
    “Just show me where.”
    “You crazy?” She wasn’t laughing anymore.
    “Show me now .”
    He grabbed her hand and