But when she got down to the beach the tide was in and there was only a little pebbly beach left, not enough to be pleasant for sitting, and there was no sign of Nat anyway. She called over and over just in case but her calls were only met with seagull cries and the sound of waves. She turned and scurried back up to the meadow calling all the way to the house in increasing volume and concern. This brought Marlin, who had been putting the finishing touches on dinner. And Charlie, who swiftly joined them.

“Do you know where Natasha went?” Fiona asked. “She left with her binoculars a long time ago and now she’s not answering.”

Both Marlin and Charlie looked upset. They knew none of them would cause this kind of worry on purpose.

“She must be lost,” said Marlin, voicing what none of them had wanted to. And if any one of them was going to get lost in the hundreds of miles of forest that extended from their property it was most apt to be Natasha, who drifted about dreamily paying little attention to her surroundings.

“We have to get help,” said Fiona, panicking in earnest now. She was suddenly filled with terror at all the dangers surrounding them. The canopy of the forest was so thick that if Search and Rescue sent choppers to look for someone they could never find them from above through the density of trees. And the ocean was never safe. You could fall from one of the cliffs, hit your head, and be pulled out by a rip and no one would ever find out what had happened to you. You could be standing on what you thought was a safe rocky promontory and a rogue wave could come suddenly barreling in, lifting you and taking you back with it before you even saw it coming. Fiona had heard friends at school talk about losing a tourist every year this way. And Billy Bear wasn’t the only bear in those forests. There were more malevolent bears, not to mention cougars and wolves.

“Call Miss Webster,” said Charlie.

“Right,” said Fiona, hurrying for the phone.

Miss Webster answered and as soon as she heard Fiona’s voice said, “What’s wrong?”

Fiona explained and Miss Webster said calmly and decidedly, “Okay, don’t any of you go out into the woods after her. We don’t need all of you lost. You sit tight at the house. Keep calling her name if you need to but go nowhere. I’m going to organize a search. I’m going to call Don too. And we’ll call Search and Rescue if we need to. Chances are she isn’t far from the house.”

They hung up. Fiona paced and then something occurred to her. “I’m going to Al’s,” she said.

“Oh, who cares about his dinner at a time like this,” said Marlin.

“No, we need him here. If the house is swarming with people asking questions he’d better be on-site too. We don’t need people asking why there wasn’t an adult here when Natasha went missing.”