The great white had a wide range of hearing. He could pick up sounds at half the frequency a human could and was equally attracted to a struggling fish or a banging oil drum. Fine veins filled with liquid, running from his head to his tail, sensed differences in water pressure around him. Through them he could detect the presence of a swimming seal or a drifting boat or a pelican in the waves.

His head was covered with pores that were electrical sensors, and his body with many more. Like a minesweeper, he could find targets beneath the mud: skates, stingrays, and tin cans, which he sometimes scooped up with the rest and which caused him no digestive problems at all.

The Amity foghorn blasted; the bell buoy clanged distantly. He accepted the sounds above the surface passively: They were simply there. He was listening to the log jostling the channel marker, thumping, squeaking, scratching.

The seals had taken the edge from his hunger, but the sound of man-things in the water angered him, for he owned the sea.

***

Ellen sat cross-legged under the Christmas tree, brushing tinsel from her hair.

The tree was not as tall as the past year's—she hadn't seen much point, with just Sean and her, in getting a big one.

And tonight the decorations, even the recent ones, had somehow lost their glitter.

Sean's sweater from Lautzhauser's Men's Store, and Tiff's lace tablecloth that had come to America from County Clare with Marty's great-grandmother, Catherine, lay wrapped on cotton snow. Ellen's presents for Mike, her older son; his wife, Carla; and her five-year-old granddaughter, Thea—all had been sent two weeks ago to the Bahamas where Mike worked as a marine biologist.

All she had to do was wait for Christmas.

She jumped when the phone rang. She was jittery tonight.

Sean got up and answered it. When he put it down, he said, "Old Larson damn near hit that log by the starboard entrance buoy." He called the coast guard. "That's what I figured," he growled into the mouthpiece. "No, I don't believe you, Chief. It's too cold for you, is all."

He yanked Marty's old Navy pea coat from the closet, angry and quick.

"What's going on?" demanded Tiffany. "Where are you going?"

"It's a log in the channel," Ellen told her. She remembered something. "You said you'd ask Lenny to do it!"

"No way." He zipped up his father's fleece-lined leather boots. "I forgot he was Joseph the Carpenter. He's rehearsing tonight for the Christmas show."

She followed him to the porch. "Please don't! Not in the fog."

"Would Dad go in the fog?"

In the orange glow of the porch light she met his eyes. They were shadowed and very dark. She knew how he hated the water, and boats of every kind. But yes, Marty would have gone, and they both knew it. It was something he had to do.

She nodded. "I guess he would."