There was the sense of something sliding more completely into place, and the feeling confused and frightened him.

Thankfully, Gloria’s mother, Trudi Jenkins, agreed to see him on short notice about an hour before nightfall. She lived to the west, in a secluded bungalow, and Saul took his pickup truck. He parked on the dirt driveway, under oak and magnolia trees and a few palmettos. Around the corner, a deck peeked out that was almost as large as her home and had a view of the beach. If she’d wanted to, she could have rented a room to tourists in the summers.

It was rumored Trudi had come to the forgotten coast after plea-bargaining a drug-trafficking charge, this more than a decade ago. But whatever her past, she had a steady hand and a level head, and going to her was better than going to the clinic another fifty miles inland, or to the medical intern who visited the village.

“I had this sliver …” Another thing about Trudi was that he could talk about the sliver. He’d tried with Charlie, but, for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out, the more he talked about it with Charlie, the more he felt like he was somehow putting it on Charlie, and he didn’t yet know how much weight Charlie could take.

Thinking about that depressed him, though, and after a while he trailed off, without having mentioned the sensation of things floating at the edge of his vision.

“You believe something bit you?”

“Maybe not a bite so much as stuck me. I had a glove on my hand, but I still shouldn’t have reached down. It might not have anything to do with how I’ve been feeling.” Yet how could he have known? The moment of sensation, non-sensation, he kept returning to.

She nodded, said, “I understand. It’s normal to worry, what with all of the mosquito- and tick-borne illnesses. So I can check your hand and arm, and take your vitals, and maybe put your fears to rest.”

She might have been a pediatrician, but she didn’t speak to him as if he were a child. She just had a way of simplifying things and getting to the point that made him grateful.

“Your kid wanders over the lighthouse quite a bit,” he said, to make conversation as he took off his shirt and she examined him.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I hope she’s not a problem.”

“No—she just climbs on the rocks a lot.”

“She’s a climber, all right. Gets into everything.”

“Could be dangerous.”

She gave him a sharp look. “I’d rather she go to the lighthouse and be around people I know than wander off on some trail or something.”

“Yeah, true,” he said, sorry he’d brought it up. “She’s got a talent for identifying poop.”

Trudi smiled. “She gets that from me. I taught her all about different kinds of poop.”

“If a bear craps in the woods, she knows about it.”

She laughed at that. “I think she might be a scientist when she grows up.”