They heard high-pitched voices piping through the blowing vapor. Small figures skipped along the beach, coming toward them. Miriam and Mindy sprang through the fog, Ben wandering behind them with no particular urgency. He was eating a piece of toast with jam on it. Strawberry jam was smeared around his lips, on his chin. He always wound up with as much on his face as went into his mouth.

Mindy held Miriam’s hand while Miriam jumped in a strange, lunging sort of way.

“Higher!” Mindy commanded. “Higher!”

“What is this?” Joel asked.

“I have a pet balloon. I named her Miriam,” Mindy said. “Float, Miriam!”

Miriam threw herself straight up off the ground and came down so heavily that her legs gave way and she sat hard on the beach. She still had Mindy’s hand and yanked her down beside her. The two girls sprawled on the damp pebbles, laughing.

Joel looked past them to Ben. “Where is Mrs. London?”

Ben chewed a mouthful of toast. He was chewing it a long time. Finally he swallowed. “She said she’d come see the dinosaur when it isn’t so cold out.”

“Float, Miriam!” Mindy screamed.

Miriam flopped onto her back with a sigh. “I’m deflating. I’m deflat.”

Joel looked at Gail with a mix of frustration and disgust.

Mindy said, “It stinks here.”

“Do you believe this?” Joel asked. “She’s not coming.”

Ben said, “She told me to tell Gail if she wants breakfast to come home. Can we buy my cowboys today?”

“You didn’t do what we asked, so you aren’t getting anything,” Joel told him.

“You didn’t say I had to get a grown-up. You just said I had to tell a grown-up,” Ben said, in a tone of voice that made even Gail want to hit him. “I want my cowboys.”

Joel walked past the little girls on the ground and grabbed Ben’s shoulder, turned him around. “Bring back a grown-up or I’ll drown you.”

“You said I could have cowboys.”

“Yes. I’ll make sure you’re buried with them.”

He kicked Ben in the ass to get him going. Ben cried out and stumbled and glanced back with a hurt look.

“Bring an adult,” Joel said. “Or you’ll see how mean I can get.”

Ben walked off in a hurry, head down, legs stiff and unbending.

“You know what the problem is?” Joel said.

“Yes.”

“No one is going to believe him. Would you believe him if he said we were guarding a dinosaur?”

The two little girls were speaking in hushed voices. Gail was about to offer to go to the house and get her mother when their secretive whispering caught her notice. She looked down to find them sitting cross-legged next to the creature’s back. Mindy had chalk and was drawing tic-tac-toe on its side.

“What are you doing?” Gail cried, grabbing the chalk. “Have some respect for the dead.”