“It sounds fierce,” she says, her eyebrows scrunched up like dust bunnies. “I peeked out the window, worried where you were.” She is running around finishing up her last room of the day. “We have to get home,” Grammy says quickly. “Olive will be a wreck.”

“Olive?”

“Storms. Remember? Olive is terrified of severe storms like this. I just called Henry; he’s not answering his phone. Esme and Ruby are off Cape today. So we’ll have to go to Olive ourselves.”

“But I want to stay on the beach and watch.”

She whips her head around. “I’d sooner paddle out to that storm in a metal skiff with a flagpole strapped to my back than leave you here to watch such a thing.”

I know there’s no point in arguing as we scurry across the lawn. But then I hear people talking about a kid who had been in the water and had called for help. How no one in their right mind would go out in the water on a day like this.

“It was probably that caretaker’s kid,” one says. “What’s his name? He’s always into something.”

I stop. I look to the ocean.

“I think it was the caretaker who went in after him,” the woman says.

I run. I run across the grass with Grammy yelling my name all the while. Thinking of the day I first saw Ronan standing on the edge of the water during a storm. Did he go in this time?

I have never seen the surf like this. It pounds the jetties with such force that the water sprays straight up into the air, creating giant walls of water that soar and then come crashing down on the rocks. A beach chair rolls along the sand as if it wants to fly like a plane. The waves roar.

I don’t see anyone in the water. No one is there. What has happened? The water is more white than dark now. It reminds me of teeth.

Grammy comes up behind me and tugs at my sleeve. “C’mon, Delsie. We have to go. Olive is probably losing her mind.”

I don’t want to leave, but Grammy looks panicked, and I wonder what kind of danger Olive is in. I scan the water one more time. No Ronan. No Gusty.

She tugs again, and I run with her, and we jump into the car.

“But Ronan. I can’t just leave Ronan.”

“We’re going to have to trust that he had the good sense to stay out of the water and that he’s okay. Olive needs us.”

I immediately turn the radio to AM and set it for no station at all. There is static with no station but pops as well. The pops are lightning hitting the ground nearby. And there are a lot of pops. Dangerous.

The lightning cracks overhead, and Grammy jumps. “I would rather not be in a car during a lightning storm,” she says.

“A car is one of the safest places to be. Just avoid falling trees.”