“I think you’re lucky to be in a tourist town where people mostly aren’t watching the news. Although locals are, and locals go to the beach, too. They work at Fausto’s. So eventually somebody’s going to recognize you. Most of the articles online make you out to be a crazy man, and people want to help little children get back to their mothers.”

Asher listens to the waves washing ashore for a time. “Evona!” Justin yells.

“I know what it’s like. To lose your child,” she says, but then she turns away. “You’re safe with me and Bell.”

Justin runs back to them, stands with his hands on his hips, panting. “The water’s warm,” he says. “Warmer than it is in the daytime. Let’s go swimming.”

“Let’s go!” Evona stands ready to bolt off with him.

“Wait, now,” Asher calls, always uncertain of the ocean. “I don’t know about that. Swimming at night.”

“It’ll be fine,” Evona says.

Justin and Evona run out into the water. He wades out behind them and the small waves wash against him like bathwater. Above him the stars are endless. Justin and Evona are laughing and splashing in the darkness but Asher feels his own quiet building around him as he walks farther out, even past them, until the water is at his chin and he tastes salt on his lips.

14

14

Justin finds a pair of red panties bunched up at the bottom of the sheets one morning when he’s helping Asher clean rooms.

“How’d they get down there?” he asks.

Asher shrugs.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Justin shouts when he sees there is a pair of men’s underwear down there, too. Blue boxer briefs with EXPRESS written around the waistband. He stands there studying on this discovery a long moment, as if figuring out a math problem. “They must have pulled them off while they were in bed and forgot about them,” he says. “Why’d they do that?” Then as soon as the last word is out of his mouth, he realizes, and his face goes red.

Justin pinches one corner of the panties and holds them up for Asher, asking him what they should do with them. Asher rushes over, holding the garbage can out like an offering plate. “Drop them in here, Justin. Now!”

In that same room Justin finds two used rubbers, one in the garbage can and one on the floor beside it (people are always just barely missing the garbage can in these rooms, but when they miss they don’t bother to pick it up like they would at home). Each of them had been tied into a knot and looked like water balloons that had slowly deflated.

Asher catches Justin staring at them and tells him to go play, but he doesn’t, as this is all far too interesting.