“Have you been drinking too?” she asks.

“No,” I insist. Why would she say something like that? I’m shaking. I’m out of breath. I’m in shock. I’m not drunk. I know what I saw. Or what I partially saw. No doubt.

Someone took my wife.

Her eyes show a mix of concern and alarm. “Sheriff is on the way,” she finally says.

I work her like a witness. “Did you see anything when you pulled in? I think he took her up to the road.”

“No,” she tells me. “I mean, nothing that stands out.”

I think then of abduction cases I’ve seen on TV. I wonder if the woman is thinking of them too. I know how many, maybe most, turn out. The ones in which some freak takes a girl or woman, holds her captive, does whatever a dark mind can imagine.

“We have to find her,” I say.

“Police will be here soon.”

“Right. When? Where are they?”

“Dispatcher said nearest officer is twenty minutes away.”

I look at my phone. I can’t hide my frustration and fear. Sweat is pouring from under my arms and down my temples. I try to slow my breathing.

“Twenty minutes might as well be an hour,” I tell her. “He could take her anywhere. There’s nothing but gravel roads and forest for miles around.”

She doesn’t respond. My guess is she’s thinking the same thing. She reaches for me but thinks better of it. I try to comfort her.

“It’ll be okay,” I tell her. “She’ll be found. She’ll be all right. She’s strong. Really strong. Mentally. Physically.”

The woman brightens a little, and Aubrey is out of her life jacket and back in my arms again, holding me C-clamp tight. I hold her and ignore that my bleeding arms are coloring her pale blue Paw Patrol T-shirt with a pink-and-red swoosh that I wish had been left by the strawberries I put on her waffles that morning. The dog walker and his black Lab approach while we stand there trying to make sense of what’s transpired. He’s older, maybe in his seventies, and speaks with a very slight accent I can’t quite make out. Dutch, maybe?

“Everything all right?” he asks. “I heard you calling out. I called 911.”

“I called too. The sheriff is on the way,” Teresa Dibley tells him. She nods at me. “He says he saw someone take his wife,” she says, her eyes on her grandchildren as they perch on the deck of their tiny cabin and take in everything. “Right here,” she goes on, trying to contain her own anxiety. She fails. “Right off the beach!”

“Did you see anything?” I ask him.

He nods and murmurs something about the shock of what’s happened, but I don’t really hear his response—it’s clear he saw less than I did. People gravitate toward danger and drama to show concern, yes. But also to silently count their blessings that nothing like this has happened to them. That being close to the unthinkable takes them off some list that God or fate keeps track of.