"I'll tell Daddy!" he yelled suddenly. Then he whirled and went pounding to the rear of the house, heading for the mud flats bordering Amity Sound.

"Sean!" she called after him weakly. "Honey, come back!"

But he was gone.

And now, gone forever...

She came back to the present. "Spank Uncle Sean, Thea?" Her voice choked. She shook her head. She must not cry on Christmas morning, not in front of Thea. "Not really..."

Everyone was looking at her. Desperately she grabbed at a straw and pointed toward a red package under the tree. It was for Thea, from Sean, sent a month before. She knew it because she had wrapped it for him; everything he wrapped looked like a lunchbag, so he claimed.

"The red one," she whispered. "It's from him."

She ran and got it. "From Uncle Sean," she announced proudly. A silence fell, and Jake became very busy cleaning up the Christmas wrapping mess.

The present from Sean was a beach pail. On it was painted RAINBOW BRIGHT, a cheery little girl with orange hair, a star sparkling on her cheek. She was framed by a rainbow. In the bucket was a tiny shovel, a pair of little heart-shaped dark glasses—awful ones, like Elton John used to wearr—a straw hat, and a pair of beach sandals.

Thea looked up excitedly. "Grandma? We can use it on the sand castle on the beach!"

"Yes, Thea," Ellen said softly, "we certainly can."

Maybe Sean would seem even closer when they did.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

To Ellen it seemed strange to be kneeling on the beach the day after Christmas. "We'll dig the moat so deep," she warned, "we'll have to swim to the castle."

"You're silly," Thea said.

Carla had gone to Nassau for a new cutting torch, and Ellen had Thea to herself all day long. Now she was helping Thea and Deenie build a seaside fortress. Deenie was one of Clarence's innumerable children, older than Thea and a combination baby-sitter/playmate.

Ellen was unused to the blazing winter sun. Against her granddaughter's tanned tummy, her own forearm was as white as a ghost's. The sand beneath them was as warm as it was on Amity Beach in August.

She packed a final shovel of sand into Thea's Rainbow Bright bucket.

"Silly? No. This is for real. It'll be a real castle, you'll be the princess on the conch-shell balcony, and you'll have lords and ladies bringing you your tea and Ding Dongs, and there'll be a big parade, and you'll ride in an enormous carriage the size of Romeo's Cadillac, pulled by six white mice with ribbons in their fur."

Thea and Deenie giggled, and Thea rested a sandy little hand on Ellen's shoulder. "You're really silly, Grandma."

The sand castle already stood as tall as Thea. There had been a long discussion on site selection. She'd warned Thea that if they built too close to the water, it would be wiped out at high tide.