Moonglass

tried to rope me into a guided tour.” He put the flashlight under his chin and widened his eyes. “Guess it worked. I’m good.”
    “And modest.” I rolled my eyes again, this time sure that there was enough light for him to see me. Then I looked around the room, which was mostly empty, aside from the beds. In the corner was a tiny wooden picnic table. I pointed to it. “Shine the light over there for a second.” He did, and I stepped over another hole in the floor, then stood over the table.
    Tyler came up behind me and curved his arm around me to put the flashlight directly over the table. It took everything in me not to lean back into him.
    “I wasn’t gonna show you this, cuz I thought it might freak you out. It’s actually the best thing I’ve found in all the cottages. Kind of the saddest, too, though.” I stared at the tabletop below me. Underneath a clear layer, probably surfboard resin, black-and-white images of two kids, a boy and a girl, smiled up at us. The entire surface of the table was a col age of the two light-haired kids at different ages, all over the beach. In one I recognized the cottage in the background. The kids sat on the boardwalk in front of it, hanging their tan legs over the edge. In another they stood proudly in front of a little boat, with their dad, I assumed. He had the same light eyes and crinkly smile. I ran my hand over the smooth surface.
    “I can’t believe they didn’t take this when they left. It’s like their whole childhood down here.”
    “I know,” Tyler said.
    I leaned down and looked at another image of the kids, who stood silhouetted side by side, looking out the living room window at the ocean. “They must have hated leaving here.”
    Tyler kept the light over the table. “Well, according to James, they didn’t really leave.”
    “What do you mean,” I asked tentatively.
    “I thought he was just messing with us when he told it, but he swears up and down that those two kids and their mom drowned under that little blue boat out there.”
    Chill s went through me, and I stared at the picture of them in front of the boat. “ Under it?” Something about this sounded vaguely familiar.
    “Yeah. In, like, three feet of water. On a sunny day with small surf.” My stomach went queasy. I knew this story. I’d heard my dad tell it to rookie guards during training, to keep them from being complacent. I’d had no idea it had happened here. Tyler went on. “The dad took them out, just to go paddle around. It was a calm day, but a big set wave came and flipped the boat.” I bit my lip, knowing what was coming, unable to take my eyes away from the smiling faces of the kids and their father. “The dad got thrown from the boat first.” Tyler paused and looked down at the pictures.
    I nodded, the scenario playing out in my head, now with faces to put to it. I knew from my dad’s story that the father had been thrown from the boat, and that while he’d struggled in the shore break, a second wave had pounded his wife and kids, and that, unfortunately, they’d clung to each other and the boat before it had flipped over. I could hear my dad’s voice as he told the story of the family trapped beneath their little boat in three feet of water. A freak accident on a placid day.
    I interrupted Tyler. “That was one of my dad’s first rescues. He was the first one to get to the boat, then the dad was there too, and he said they could hear the kids and the mom yelling from under it.” When my dad told the story to the rookie classes, he spoke about how the boat had landed in a depth of water, at such an angle, that it was Literally suctioned to the sand. He told them about how the strength of all the people on the beach who rushed into the water to help wasn’t enough to loose it from the sand. How eventually, they’d had to wait for the tide to come up, and the inevitable. And he told them how they could never take the ocean for granted and how he would always be reminded of that fact by the memory of muffled voices from beneath that boat, on a sunny day, in water that barely covered his knees. There weren’t many things that could stun a group of cocky new guys into silence, but my dad’s voice when he told that story was one of them.
    That same silence fell over Tyler and me now, and I searched for a way to break it. “So the dad just left after that? Left everything here?” Tyler swept the flashlight around the room. “Yeah. I would have too.