Standing on the beach, Lucas saw a vacant, endless world stretched out on every side. Even the enormous ocean was engulfed in a haze of mist and spray that collected the particles of his vision only to disperse them into a glowing white cloud, the vault of nature that dwarfed the straggling line of houses along the coast and the little town tucked into a notch in the coastline, a narrow harbor there, where the mountains veered closer to the water and raised the surrounding land. There again were his parents, tiny figures moving about a doll’s house, bleached and peeling, left out in the sun and rain.

Lucas waited to see if any of his friends, the children who lived in the neighboring houses, would turn up, but none of them did. This happened sometimes. Lucas didn’t mind being alone with Smokey. He could always sneak away, go exploring up toward the ruins of the old pier, but the last time he went out of sight of the house, his parents had both become so distraught their behavior alarmed him, and their relief at seeing him again, their sadness, too, buffeted him with quiet words and cautious gestures, leaving him with an uneasy feeling that didn’t go away for a long time. There was something about their quiet fussing, their distress, that made him feel as though he’d inflicted a more lasting kind of harm to them in some way.

After school, one or another of his teenaged cousins would take care of him while his father was away and his mother was resting, but now his cousins weren’t available, it seemed. Aunt Inger was busy, too, with holiday things he only vaguely understood, but, when he came in again, slightly dazed from a glut of space and sea air, she was there, sitting in the parlor talking with his mother.

“We’ll start soon,” she told Aunt Inger as he came into the house.

She greeted him warmly, as always, and his mother smiled her close-lipped smile at him.

“Did you have a nice walk?’ she asked.

“It’s so misty!” he said.

“It is!” Aunt Inger said. “You’re right!”

Lucas felt encouraged by this and began speaking. Aunt Inger and his mother listened to a recitation of his observations that day with little cooings of appreciation. When he finished, Aunt Inger said—

“He has the eye of an artist. We should get him a painting set!”

Mother gave her a particular look then, and Aunt Inger added, immediately:

“When the time is right!”